TORONTO — A flight attendant’s refusal to give an unopened can of pop to a Muslim woman on a United Airlines flight has some people threatening to boycott the company. It’s the latest in a string of negative publicity for the airline.
Last month, United faced a ton of backlash after it made an emergency landing to kick an autistic girl off a plane. Another controversy erupted last Wednesday: Sarah Blackwood, a singer in the Canadian group Walk off the Earth, told Global News she was forced off a United flight after a flight attendant told her to “control” her crying son.
READ MORE: Here’s how to get kicked off a Canadian flight
The latest incident to spark outrage happened just two days later, when Tahera Ahmad — an associate chaplain and director of interfaith engagement at Northwestern University — asked a flight attendant for a can of Diet Coke. She requested that it be unopened “due to hygienic reasons.” What happened next left Ahmad in “tears of humiliation,” according to a Facebook post.
The female flight attendant reportedly told her that she couldn’t do that, but then apparently brought the man sitting next to Ahmad an unopened can of beer.
“So I asked her again why she refused to give me an UNOPENED can of diet coke. She said, ‘We are unauthorized to give unopened cans to people because they use it as a WEAPON on the plane,'” Ahmad wrote Friday night.
Ahmad said she was brought to tears after nobody came to her defense. She ended her post with “#IslamophobiaISREAL.”
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The airline released a statement about the incident, saying the flight attendant “attempted several times to accommodate Ms. Ahmad’s beverage request after a misunderstanding regarding a can of diet soda.” United also apologized “for not delivering the service our customers expect when traveling with us.”
That statement trivialized the matter, Ahmad felt, by reducing it to a can of soda.
While some are using the incident as an opportunity to spew Islamophobic statements on social media, many others are expressing their outrage over it. By Monday morning, there were more than 26,000 tweets with the hashtag #UnitedforTahera. In the last two days, there have also been more than 1,300 tweets with the #BoycottUnitedAirlines hashtag.
Here’s a look at what some people are saying:
James Faghmous posted: “Stay classy @united. Not setting foot in your flights until apology & staff get sensitivity training.” Another man, Abdel, wrote that he would be skipping his upcoming United flight and purchasing a new one from a different airline.”
Omar Suleiman said he is refusing to fly on the airline “until they learn how to not discriminate. Pathetic behavior.”
https://twitter.com/RaefMusic/status/604699345955528704
https://twitter.com/lucqia_ellis/status/605396165811695616
https://twitter.com/sarahaleisa11/status/604644148205875200
https://twitter.com/WhyJoshuaWhy/status/604811922194636800
As for why an unopened can of coke can be considered a weapon?
https://twitter.com/chelsea_elisa/status/605216546416431105
UPDATE: On Wednesday, United published a statement on the company’s website saying they had apologized to Ahmad and indicated that a Shuttle America employee “will no longer serve United customers.”
“While United did not operate the flight, Ms. Ahmad was our customer and we apologize to her for what occurred on the flight,” read the post.
“United does not tolerate behavior that is discriminatory – or that appears to be discriminatory – against our customers or employees.”
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