A Black family alleged they were discriminated against while flying on Flair Airlines.
What was supposed to be an uneventful hour and 25-minute shuttle trip from Vancouver to Calgary turned into a vexing experience for the Black travelers.
A white woman sat in the seat purchased by Busayo Alle’s husband for his wife to travel on flight F8804 and refused to leave when asked.
The Black woman reported the incident to the flight attendant. However, though the airline worker asked the woman to leave the seat, she eventually acquiesced to the resistant traveler.
Instead of removing the woman from the 2A seat, the attendant then asked Busayo to find another seat and threatened to put the mother off the flight.
In the video, shot on April 14, the day of the incident, the attendant can be heard saying to Busayo, “If you [don’t] calm down, we need to get you out of this aircraft.”
The new mother responded, “I can’t be calm after what you just did.”
While Busayo was shocked that the white woman not only told her “no” but flipped the middle finger at her when she asked her to move, she was also outraged at the response of the flight attendant.
“We paid for this flight, and you didn’t help me,” she said to the attendant.
She had purchased her seat so that she could sit next to her mother-in-law and her 12-week-old child.
Now, the woman’s husband has stepped in on social media and is calling for justice. The family was recently relocated to the country (less than a year) and believes this should not be accepted.
In an approximately 9-minute TikTok video titled “Racism in Canada” Adeola Omo Adeyemi expressed his frustration and pointed out how racist the incident was. He said he heard most of the back-and-forth because she had called him on the phone.
@adeolaalle Racism and Discrimination on flair airline from Vancouver to Calgary @Globalnews.ca @CTVNews #racism #racismincanada #discrimination ♬ original sound – Scholars Pivot on YouTube
He said, “My wife and family were discriminated against.”
“[My wife] kept her cool, but to our dismay — the captain said that this plane has to go and we want you to sit on that side of the airplane. We’ve been helping you enough.”
He said, “You’re not helping me. You are asking me to sit in a seat I did not pay for.”
It was then that Busayo, according to her husband, accused the people of racism. Noting, the Flair staff spoke to her in a “very condescending” way, he added, “If a Black person was sitting on that seat, they would not have hesitated to kick them off the flight.”
He posted a snapshot of the woman and placed it in the video, noting that anyone that could take a seat from a nursing mother deserves to have their friends, family, and employer know exactly what type of person they are.
Once the video hit social media, many others had comments and questions for Flair Airlines.
“How did the other passenger get away with telling the flight staff she was not going to move even though she was not assigned to that seat?” one person asked.
Some believed the white woman should have been arrested.
“The woman in the wrong seat should have been arrested as soon as she said ‘No’ to a flight attendant. There is no defending why this did not happen,” a user named Mark commented. A profile named Mike said she ought to be placed on the “No Fly List” also.
“Imagine telling her to calm down when she was calm. Talk about corporate racist gaslighting,” @PapiGra tweeted.
One other person tweeted, “Please sue the airline, that’s the only way this discrimination will eventually stop, most especially for the sake of our coming generations. She had her seat, why take up a Black person’s seat and think you can bully your way out of it?”
A spokesperson from Flair Airlines submitted a statement regarding the Canadian incident.
“Flair Airlines staff did ask the passenger in 2A to move to her assigned seat, but she refused multiple times. Unfortunately, this caused the situation to escalate,” the representative said.
The airlines said they believe the attendant did try and de-escalate the incident.
“The resolution taken for the flight was to seat the passenger in the window seat on the other side of the aircraft — the same row and seat, just on the other side of the plane,” the spokesperson for Flair explained.
The representative said they spoke to Busayo’s wife directly to hear her account of what happened. After hearing her version, the company offered her its “sincerest apologies for any distress and to discuss ways the airline can remedy her concerns.”
A full refund for the cost of the flight and any extras purchased for both seats has been issued to Busayo’s credit card, according to the airline.
However, money is not an issue for the family.
“Injustice happened, and they should have acted better. I want a formal apology,” Busayo said, adding that they want the airlines to learn “how to treat everybody equally and fairly.”
