A mother claimed she was kicked off a United Airlines flight with her distraught 16-month-old son for using the wrong pronoun for a flight attendant.
Jenna Longoria was expecting to fly to Austin from San Francisco on Wednesday with her mother and son when United prevented them from traveling.
She alleges she was denied boarding after an “accidental” mix-up when addressing a United staff member, who she claims refused to accept her apology.
The desperate mother also alleged that the flight had taken off with her luggage containing her and her mother’s medications still on board, so she was at risk of becoming “seriously” ill while stranded.
“They say what I committed is a hate crime and I may not even be able to fly United again,” he fumed in a clip posted to Instagram.
Jenna Longoria accused the airline of blocking her and her mother from flying from San Francisco to Houston on Wednesday after she used the wrong pronoun for a flight attendant.
In the clip, she says that while boarding the flight she mistook the gender of an employee.
“I’ll tell you what happened now, I made a mistake with one of the flight attendant’s pronouns and the other flight attendant didn’t like it,” Longoria explained.
“I said, ‘I’m so sorry, I’m not very well versed in pronouns,’ I was holding my son, he was having a tantrum, I had the car seat on my back.
“I really wasn’t focusing on anything other than getting my son’s car seat on the plane and making him comfortable.”
A United Airlines staff member told him that the captain personally banned him from the plane.
The mother claimed that the flight had taken off without her but with her luggage containing medications still on board.
But there appears to be more to the story, with another video showing a United Airlines employee appearing to reference more than just an accidental mix-up over the employee’s pronouns.
In the clip, she can be seen speaking to a United staff member, who informs her that it was the captain’s decision to deny her the flight because of “what came out of her mouth.”
The employee also tells him ‘there was something else I heard’, beyond the pronoun error.
“They basically said bad luck and didn’t tell me exactly what I said,” Longoria said.
In another clip, the desperate mother is seen pleading with her 20,000 Instagram followers for advice on what her rights are.
“We don’t know how we’re going to get back today,” he says. “I don’t know what to do, I really don’t know what to do.”
DailyMail.com has contacted United Airlines for comment.
