United Airlines refuses passage to family for using wrong pronouns
United Airlines staff refused to allow a family to board the plane because the mother used the wrong pronouns for one of the flight attendants.
'I’m not very versed with pronouns'
Jenna Longoria was waiting to board a flight from San Francisco to Austin on Wednesday with her 16-month-old son and mother. When passengers with priority seating — such as people with disabilities or small children — were called to board the plane, a flight attendant told Longoria she would not be allowed to embark.
“The flight attendant has denied access to us because he said that I had made a derogatory comment about one of the flight attendants because I didn’t use the right pronoun,” Longoria said in a video she posted to social media while still in the airport. “Now they are forbidding us to get on the plane.”
In another video taken in the airport, Longoria explained the incident in further detail and expressed confusion about pronoun mandates.
“They won’t tell me exactly what I said, but what happened — and I will tell you what happened right now — I was speaking to one of the flight attendants, got their pronouns wrong,” she explained. “The other flight attendant didn’t like it. I said ‘I’m really sorry’ . . . I’m not very versed with pronouns. I was holding my son, he was having a temper tantrum. I had the car seat on my back. I wasn’t really focusing on anything except getting my son’s car seat on the flight and getting him comfortable and safe.”
She noted that her luggage, which contained medication for herself and her son, was still on the plane.
In a statement reportedly made to a Daily Wire reporter about the incident, United Airlines claimed the family was denied after a discussion about having too many carry-ons.
'For what came out of your mouth'
“A party of three traveling out of San Francisco today was not allowed to board following a discussion about having too many carry-on items. The matter was resolved and the customers took a later United flight to finish their trip.”
But another video posted by Longoria shows a United Airlines representative telling Longoria the captain denied her “for what came out of your mouth.”
“So my 16-month-old son, myself, my mother are being denied — “ Longoria began to ask.
“For what came out of your mouth,” the representative confirmed.
“I got the wrong pronoun, I didn’t know [if it was a] ‘they’ or ‘he’ or ‘she’.”
The representative nodded and said, “There was some more that I heard that you had a conversation with the in-flight [crew].”
After the videos began to go viral, it appears Longoria was allowed to take a different flight with United. She later posted to Instagram that she and her family had arrived home safe.
“We’re still in shock at what happened today,” she wrote. “What happened to us was not right.”
United Airlines, helmed by crossdressing CEO Scott Kirby, has been openly committed to gender ideology. The airline offers “Pride flights,” which are staffed exclusively by “LGBTQ+-identifying employees, from the pilots and gate attendants to ground operations crew.”
