Woman banned for life from airline for bizarre reason
A woman has recalled the moment she was told by a major airline that she has been placed on the no-fly list for a very strange reason.
Erin Wright, a 24-year-old from the US, was travelling to her sister's bachelorette party in New Mexico and was preparing to board her flight from New Orleans with American Airlines.
When she kept running into errors online as she tried to check into the flight, she headed to the airport to sort out the issue, only to be told she was allegedly banned from the airline for life for “having sexual relations with a man on a flight while intoxicated”.
The ban came as a shock for one key reason.
“I am a 24-year-old lesbian. You see me. Am I having sexual relations with any man? No,” Erin laughed in her now viral TikTok.
She said the gate staff couldn’t tell her why she was black-listed and it wasn’t until three weeks later the reason was revealed after several back and forth emails.
“I got to the airport an hour and a half early, I went to the kiosk and asked them to check me in and they were really nice,” Erin explained in the clip that's amassed 2.6 million views.
The airport staff then spent the next 10 minutes on the phone to try and work out the problem, while Erin was “freaking out” that she was going to miss her flight.
“She gets off the phone and looks nervous. She said ‘ma’am I am really sorry to tell you this but you have actually been banned from flying American Airlines’,” Erin claimed.
A confused Erin demanded to know the reason but the employee couldn’t disclose the information saying it was an issue of “internal security”, recalling in her video, “I was like, ‘what?’ because I’ve never done anything. ‘What did I get banned for, can you tell me?’”
“I realised I am going to miss my [United Airlines] flight and luckily I booked another $1,000 round trip flight to New Orleans [with a different airline].”
A few weeks after her trip and after several emails to the airline, they revealed that the reason she was banned, as Erin said, “I get an email from cooperate security telling me I am banned because I had sexual relations with a man on a flight while intoxicated.”
“It took 12 days and many emails from me between when I contacted customer relations to when I actually got an email back.”
She remained on the no-fly list and had to file an official appeal, as advised by corporate security.
“I email them a very serious email, but also somewhat funny, because in it I am like ‘I don’t really know how to prove it wasn’t me except for the fact that I am literally a lesbian’," she said.
“I can like get you letters from other people telling you that that’s the truth.”
After three months, Erin said she was refunded the money for her flight and was taken off the no-fly list.
In a follow up video, Erin said it has been a “super upsetting experience” adding she wasn’t compensated for the extra flight she had to book “because of their error”.
Image credits: TikTok / Shutterstock