December 21, 2017
Mr. Óscar Muñoz
Chief Executive Officer
United Airlines
233 South Wacker Drive
Chicago IL 60606
Dear Mr. Muñoz:
Re: U.S. Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas)
This letter concerns an incident that occurred on December 18, 2017, when a United employee re-assigned my pre-purchased first class seat and boarding pass to U.S. Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) without my knowledge or consent.
On December 3, 2017, I purchased a round trip first class ticket from Washington DC to Guatemala, confirmation number MPRSVX. I selected four first class seats at the time of purchase. United provided an email confirmation with a receipt and the four seat designations. Everything was fine until I returned to Houston on December 18, 2017.
After flying from Guatemala to Houston early on December 18, 2017, the second segment involved UA788 from Bush International Airport, Houston to Reagan National Airport in Washington DC.
Because the flight departure time was delayed due to a late incoming aircraft, flight UA376 from Guadalajara, I spent two hours in the United lounge in Terminal E. I was at Gate E4 an hour before departure. About thirty minutes before takeoff, a uniformed United flight attendant pulled Ms. Jackson Lee from priority boarding Line 1, where Jackson Lee was conversing with fellow congressmen from Texas. The United flight attendant and Jackson Lee were a couple feet from me: the United flight attendant said to Jackson Lee, “Let’s get on.”
The United attendant and Jackson Lee boarded the plane first, including before the standard pre-boarding of uniformed military, children under two, unaccompanied minors, passengers with disabilities, Global Services passengers, and even the group of fellow Texas congressmen whom Jackson Lee had been talking to before she was escorted onto the plane. Line 1 boarded, but when they scanned my ticket, my seat and my reservation had been removed from the system. The gate agent could not find my seat; she tried hard, but she could not find my ticket or even my name. She tried for several minutes to pull up my reservation, but I had been wiped from the system. The gate agent called over a second United agent, who confirmed that I had no seat, not just the first class seat I had purchased, but no seat at all. I didn’t even have a reservation anymore.
The second agent asked the original agent if I was late coming in from another flight or another airline. The first agent told him no, that I had been on United for both segments of the trip, that my first flight had arrived three hours earlier, and that I had been at Gate E4 on time. The second agent then told me that perhaps I had cancelled my own reservation. I said that was impossible: I had a boarding ticket in hand and I just wanted to get home. Then he told me that “united.com” has changed your reservation” and there was nothing United or I could do about it.
I said I wanted my seat, that I had paid miles – 140,000 for this trip and that seat -- and that it was United’s responsibility to undo the seat assignment and return it to me, the person who had paid for it. He said no, because I had “unreserved” my seat and it had been given to another passenger, and that Jackson Lee had been, in his words, “upgraded.” He said I could “stand here and argue” and miss the flight or book another flight with another airline, meaning that I would lose my first class ticket and pay for a second one.
I said I wanted my seat, 1A, that I had paid for and selected on December 3, 2017, the one that the Ms. Jackson Lee was occupying and freeloading literally at my expense. He said that could not happen because they couldn’t “disrupt” what was already done. He offered me a $300 voucher. I said I wanted $500. He agreed. I said I wanted a meal. He replied: “And I want a Mercedes Benz, but that’s not going to happen.” He suggested I complete a United online customer satisfaction survey.
The first agent went into the United reservations system and told me that one hour and twenty minutes earlier, my seat had been re-assigned. That means that at about 11:20am, a United employee went into the system, eliminated my 1A seat designation, and re-assigned it to Jackson Lee. At no time did a United employee tell me that Sheila Jackson Lee was the passenger now occupying my seat.
The gate agent re-ticketed me. I was the last passenger on the plane. A Texas congressman who had been talking to Ms. Jackson Lee before boarding sat down next to me. He said was glad I had made it on the flight. I showed him my boarding pass with my seat, 1A, printed on it. He said, “You know what happened, right? Do you know who’s in your seat?” I said no. He told me that she was Sheila Jackson Lee, a fellow U.S. congresswoman who regularly does this. He told me that this was the third time he personally had watched her bump a passenger. That was when I learned that it was Sheila Jackson Lee who was occupying my seat.
Then he asked me if I knew whom Jackson Lee represents in Congress: “Bush International Airport.” He apologized, saying, “Jackson Lee gives us all a bad name.” The congressman returned to his seat in first class.
The hydraulic pump on the flight was not working, so after fifty minutes at the gate, passengers were invited to consult with a gate agent at the front of the plane about alternative flights. I went to the front, where Jackson Lee was in my seat. I took a picture. I told a flight attendant, the one who had pre-boarded Jackson Lee, that I knew why I had been bumped.
Five minutes later, a different flight attendant sat down next to me and asked if I was going to be a “problem” on the flight. I asked if she heard me shouting or complaining. She said “no, but you took a photo.” The flight attendant said that security would remove me from the plane if I “created problems.” I said I just wanted to get home. I said to her: “Why should someone get a seat I paid for?” She responded that the person had Global Services status. In fact, Jackson Lee boarded even before Global Services was invited to board, not to mention that the first class seat was mine regardless of Jackson Lee’s United status.
United lied to me. It put Jackson Lee on the plane – one that was half empty, including in Economy Plus -- and then tried to blame this on a late incoming flight, another airline, my cell phone, United’s website, Global Services, and on everybody but the United employee who erased my seat, my ticket and my name from the system in order to accommodate a member of Congress who repeatedly bullies her way into favored status.
United owes me a written apology: not an email, not a text, but a written apology for having giving my seat to a member of Congress who has a reputation for bullying everyone in her path, while United willingly accommodates such behavior.
United also needs to make me whole again with respect to the humiliation I suffered when its attendant, with passengers seated around me, threatened to force me off a plane.
I expect to hear back from United within seven business days. I hope not to have to take further action.
Very truly yours,
Jean-Marie Simon
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