Originally Posted by
Wannabe Flyer
Refused to sit in his assigned seat........the buck stops there.
If that really is the case, I'd tend to agree. However, I'm a little skeptical that this really happened as stated. To my mind, if the guy just sat down in some seat he for whcih he did not hold a ticket, and the passenger who was properly ticketed for that seat asked him to move, and he refused, it would be an extraordinary move on the part of the crew to have the ticked passenger move somewhere else. That to me suggests that there is something more to that aspect of the incident. I'm just speculating, but it seems a likely explanation is that they may have both been issued tickets for that seat. I know that it's happened to me on a number of occasions. If you have 2 passengers who have tickets to the same seat, moving the person already sitting in the seat doesn't make sense. Again, I'm just speculating, but that scenario seems a lot more plausible than: "Entitled white guy sits anywhere he wants and flight crew makes black passenger sit elsewhere because RACISM!!!!.
Bear in mind that this article is apparently simply a regurgitation of the claims of the person filing the lawsuit. The article explicitly states there there has been no comment from United, and there's nothing which appears to be statements from the other passenger, or uninvolved witnesses. A person looking for the big payola in a discrimination lawsuit may have a vested interest in presenting the events is a certain way, which may or may not be an accurate reflection of what really happened .... know what I mean?