United Airlines Investigating Ted Cruz Data Leak

One Mile at a Time ^ | FEBRUARY 20, 2021 | BY BEN

[conservative98]

The basics of Ted Cruz’s trip to Cancun

This past Wednesday Ted Cruz flew from Houston to Cancun on United Airlines with his family. While he tried to fly under the radar (no pun intended), this was making national headlines by Thursday, as people caught onto what was happening.

Cruz started by throwing his kids under the bus, as one does, claiming he was just trying to be a good dad, and was just dropping his kids off, and would fly back on Thursday:

“With school canceled for the week, our girls asked us to take a trip with friends. Wanting to be a good dad, I flew down with them last night and am flying back this afternoon. My staff are in constant communication with state and local leaders to get to the bottom of what happened in Texas.”

Text messages revealed a different story, though. Heidi Cruz (Ted Cruz’s wife) had texted friends in Houston, stating their house was “FREEZING,” and inviting others to join them at the Ritz-Carlton Cancun (where they’ve stayed “many times”), and stated that rooms were $309 per night.

At this point people started looking at the upgrade list for the United flight from Cancun to Houston, noticing that Cruz was just barely missing the upgrade.

Again, Cruz claimed he was just dropping off his kids, but then it was revealed that Cruz had actually changed his flight. A source at United clearly accessed his reservation, and reported that at around 6AM on Thursday he changed his return flight from Saturday to Thursday.

Cruz eventually admitted this, and said “it’s been a tough week.”

United Airlines now investing data leak Most of the information about Cruz’s trip to Mexico was made public through “legitimate” means — there were pictures of him at the airport, his name was on the public upgrade list, etc. However, there’s one detail that someone could get in trouble for.

Specifically, someone had leaked that Cruz had changed his flight from returning on Sunday to returning on Thursday. Politico reports that United Airlines is now investigating this, and that the person who made the leak could be terminated:

“It’s against United’s policies to share personal information about our customers and we are investigating this incident.”

The airline states nothing is “off the table,” and the outcome depends on if they can figure out with certainty who disclosed this information.

Employees with access to United’s reservations system can easily see the record of flight changes that have been made. United can also easily tell who accessed Cruz’s record, either just to view it, or to make an actual change. The catch is that I’d bet quite a few employees had looked into this (purely out of curiosity), which might make it tough to figure out who the actual leak was.

Flight attendant union tells United to drop it Sara Nelson, the President of the Association of Flight Attendants (often referred to as the most powerful flight attendant in America), is telling United to drop this investigation, saying that they are “all the leak.” She stated that Ted Cruz is “not a customer,” but rather that “he’s a public servant who has lied too many times.”

Bottom line

Ted Cruz’s trip to Mexico has created a lot of controversy. The trip itself aside, he first threw his kids under the bus and then lied about it. That lie was exposed when an airline employee revealed that he had in fact changed his itinerary to return on Thursday rather than Saturday.

United Airlines is now investigating the incident, and threatening to terminate the employee behind it. I’ll be curious to see if anything comes of this — I wouldn’t be surprised if quite a few United employees had accessed Cruz’s record, which could make it tough to definitely tell who actually leaked the information.

[conservative98]

-----------Sara Nelson @FlyingWithSara President of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA @afa_cwa , representing 50K at 20 airlines. Proud Flight Attendant & Passionate Union Activist since 1996. Washington, DCafacwa.orgJoined February 2015

---------------

Perspective: whoever the “leak” is, she/he/they have over 10k @united colleagues & families in TX who are freezing while their US Senator skips town & then tries to lie about it. @tedcruz is not a “customer,” he’s a public servant who has lied too many times. WE’RE ALL THE LEAK. https://t.co/NDs6935xim— Sara Nelson (@FlyingWithSara) February 20, 2021

[rktman]

Yeah, how could THAT have happened?

[TexasFreeper2009]

no one cares that Cruz took a vacation. This is a nothing burger.

Cruz had ZERO to do with the power issues, and his presence here would of only been an additional drain on the electric grid.

[conservative98]

This issue now is about the data leak!

[Mr. K]

The fact that he tried to excuse it and apologise affectively shows he lacks leadership.

I like him in the senate though.

[granite]

Fire EVERYONE that accessed his file for no legitimate reason!

[Shadylake]

Ly’in Ted, pissed he got caught.

[Slyfox]

I have a friend who is a flight attendant. She told me to NEVER let my kids fly by themselves unescorted. She said that she had overheard on a number of occasions, homosexual flight attendants talking about "that cute boy," a young boy traveling unescorted.

So, what Ted did was the correct thing by escorting his young daughters on the plane.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

United Airlines will investigate itself and find itself innocent, just like when the FBI investigates itself.

[crusty old prospector]

Cue the Casablanca meme about rounding up the usual suspects.

[Brian Griffin]

1. Affluent people can view accuweather and use a credit card to avoid bad weather.

2. The Democrats in DC have probably made it perfectly clear that they will do things without Cruz’s input.

3. The time to fix the barn door is before the horses have bolted.

[Slyfox]

You are pretty new here. You should be a little more respectful, because people like you stick out like sore thumbs.

[BiglyCommentary]

Anyone with a pass rider account can lookup the standby lists. You can even see those on the United app as a non-employee.

This is what would show:

CRU, T

[windsorknot]

Thanks, Beto.

[Jane Long]

Yeah, something tells me Sara the Socialist would be up in arms had it been a Dem Reps info that was leaked by an airline employee.

Also, who said it was a United flight attendant who leaked the flight change info?

Sara needs to keep her nose outta this and her yap closed.

[Brian Griffin]

Biden has claimed asylum seekers in Mexico are in danger of violence.

Should Senator Cruz have failed to safeguard his daughters while in Mexico?

[Kriggerel]

“...United Airlines will investigate itself and find itself innocent, just like when the FBI investigates itself...”

I thought United was still too busy breaking guitars. :P