A Black female passenger claimed that she was kicked off an American Airlines flight because a white man alleged he felt racially threatened.
The woman recently posted multiple videos about her experience on TikTok under her account @lovergirlmagic.
One video shows the moment she and her girlfriend were booted from the flight. Another shows her brief encounter with a white male passenger who allegedly told the flight crew that he felt threatened after she touched his bag in an overhead bin.
She posted a follow-up video explaining what led up to the forced deplaning right after she boarded an Austin-bound flight from Chicago.
She stated that she and her partner boarded the flight with first-class tickets. When she made it to her seat, she put her backpack under the seat in front of her, but a flight attendant requested she use space in one of the overhead bins.
She found space in an overhead bin above her seat and attempted to move another passenger’s belongings to make room for her backpack.
“I touched the bag above me and the guy next to me got up and yelled at me and said, ‘Do not touch my bag! Do not touch my stuff!'” she recounted.
At that point, a flight attendant offered to move her backpack to a different overhead bin. She agreed to move her bag as long as it was in a nearby bin within her line of sight since it carried valuable tech products.
After her belongings were moved, she said she saw the man who yelled at her whisper something to a woman seated next to him before loudly broadcasting, “I’m threatened! I feel threatened!”
She recalled hearing the man tell the flight crew that he felt threatened and uncomfortable because she did not place her backpack near his belongings, adding the claim that race was a factor in her decision to move her bag.
“He said that it was a ‘race thing,’ and that he felt threatened because he’s white and I’m Black, and that I mentioned something racist towards him, although I never spoke to him or even said anything out loud, other than I didn’t want my bag to be next to people I didn’t know.”
She said the flight crew immediately booted her off the flight and told her she was being removed because the male passenger reported he was threatened, even though she never said anything to him.
“They pulled me and my partner off the flight and they said, ‘Oh it’s a race thing, it’s a race thing.’ And I asked, ‘What’s the race problem?’ If there’s a race thing, it should be against me more than anything.”
She said a flight attendant told her verbatim that the issue was “a race thing,” and that she repeatedly asked for clarification about the racial factor in her removal.
“And so they kicked me off the flight and my partner off the flight, and they pushed me. They physically pushed me off of the flight and they just kept saying, ‘Oh it’s a race thing.'”
The woman also questioned whether she should call police over the situation.
“I never spoke to anyone on the flight other than the flight attendant when I asked her if I could move my bag somewhere. Please tell me what race has to do with me being on a flight,” she explained. “(The male passenger) just jumped up and said, ‘I was threatened,’ although no one threatened him, no one talked to him. … He lied. No one ever talked to him and all of a sudden there was a race problem.”
The booted passenger also posted a recording of a conversation with a manager in which she and her girlfriend had to dispute the allegation that the male passenger was threatened.
Her videos of her flight experience have racked up hundreds of thousands of views on TikTok, with many viewers expressing shock over how the situation played out.
“First of all, what the airline did was racial discrimination. They had no right to kick you off,” one person commented.
@lovergirlmagic #americanairlines #flights #race ♬ original sound – MAGIC ✨
“Big lawsuit, do it. Unacceptable and I think you’re amazing for being so calm telling your story,” someone else wrote.
In January, three Black men were booted from an American Airlines flight after a passenger complained that they were the cause of a foul odor on the plane. The men filed a racial discrimination lawsuit which the airline settled earlier this month. The airline employees involved in the incident were also suspended from their positions.
