Family Asked To Leave Southwest Flight After Tweet

CBS Minnesota ^ | 7/22/2014 | CBS Minnesota

[Dallas59]

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — A Twin Cities man is upset about the way his family was treated on a Southwest Airlines flight because of a tweet.

Duff Watson says he was asked to de-board a flight from Denver to Minneapolis with his two kids on Sunday after an agent didn’t like a tweet he wrote about her service.

Watson and the agent had a disagreement before boarding initially.

“I was left, you know, very upset, very embarrassed, very humiliated,” Watson said.

He’s an “A-List” passenger, which means he gets priority boarding. But a gate agent wouldn’t let his 6-year-old and 9-year-old board with him — so they’d all have to wait to board later.

[firebrand]

As the comedian John Oliver observed: “...the Internet is like quicksand. The more aggressively you fight to remove yourself from it, the deeper you’re going to sink down into it."

Something to remember when some jerk embarrasses you in front of the entire universe. Let it rest rather than attract lots of attention to it. In fact, it often becomes a fitting comment on his stupidity just by hanging there as the last word.

[Veto!]

Royalties will be contributed to FR in your name:)

[Osage Orange]

Ditto that................

[bikerman]

his 6-year-old and 9-year-old

TSA want to fondle the children first I Guess.

[ItsOurTimeNow]

I love arrogant “way to treat an A-List passenger” comment - like it’s some kind of hero badge.

[spankalib]

You’re right about the rock-hard torture device.
I’ll fly SW, but dang my butt got sore!

[353FMG]

And if his name had been Mohammed they would have given him Southwest Airlines prayer rugs for him and his kids.

[bgill]

She said, ‘You can’t board the plane unless you delete that tweet,’

What a big whiny baby SW has employed. IOW, she took company time to search out his tweet and went on a personal quest to make a scene. But somehow removing the tweet would make her feel safe again. Sticks and stones. Not that I fly these days but heads up to all airlines - I do NOT board without my children. Period. End of discussion.

[Norseman]

The guy was probably being a class-A jerk while demanding privileges he wasn’t entitled to. It would be interesting to see a video of the original encounter.

Then to threaten a “tweet”. What a dweeb. His kids, particularly the 9-year-old, were probably embarrassed by his actions. Some example he set for them.

Waiters probably spit in his soup on a regular basis, I’m betting.

And until we really know how big an ass he really was, we can’t really know whether the gate attendant over-reacted. By then she might have even been questioning whether it was safe to leave him on the plane given his mood and behavior.

This started with him demanding special treatment and not graciously taking no for an answer. It’s all on him. Every bit of it.

[defconw]

LOL! Good to know there are still some white people in the Cities!

[Norseman]

>> I do NOT board without my children. Period. End of discussion.<<

So, your options would be:

1) Stand there insisting upon special treatment making an ass out of yourself, or

2) Wait and board when your children were entitled to board.

And you would choose which option?

We know which one he chose.

[CPONav]

I have come to the conclusion that putting something on Twitter is not a “tweet”. It’s a “twit”.
Why would any semi normal person “twit” another one?

[SoothingDave]

Twitter, as far as I can see, is a swamp of moronic babbling.

If you follow moronic babblers, you will see moronic babbling.

If you follow interesting people, you get interesting tweets.

I got the story on Halbig yesterday on Twitter first. By following a newsman who was waiting with bated breath for the story.

[ChildOfThe60s]

I understand that. Too much trouble. So I found out about Halbig a hour or two later.

Even if a large portion of tweeters were interesting, it’s simply not a part of the information flow that interests me. The ignorant rabble will always outnumber everyone else in that medium.

[bert]

You speak of ignorant rabble while missing the major point.

By tweeting, the young ladies are making a difference. That is, achieving their only real goal in life..... to make a difference

[SoothingDave]

You don’t see everyone’s tweets. Only those you choose to follow. The medium is what you choose it to be. If you are reading a bunch of “ignorant rabble” that is your own choice.

Follow. Unfollow.

[Grampa Dave]

” How did SW Airlines people find his Twitter feed right then when he was still at the airport? Do their personnel really go to social media sites when they are at work??? I think there my be an untold story here.”

Sounds like a setup/I got you.

Something is missing from this story.

[SoothingDave]

All major companies have Twitter accounts. You can interact with customer service by sending a tweet to them.

He either did that, or tweeted with a hashtag related to Southwest and they monitor the use of hashtags like that.

It’s not a conspiracy theory.

[SilvieWaldorfMD]

I’m torn about this issue. On one hand, the SWA agent is a moron for asking a passenger to delete a Tweet. On the other hand, the passenger cheaped out and didn’t buy priority boarding for his kids. If he’d done this, his kids (who are not toddlers) could have boarded with him. Then he gets humiliated by the agent and Tweeted out everything. STOP TWEETING EVERYTHING YOU DO EVERY SECOND OF THE DAY, PEOPLE!