‘This Is for Family Boarding Only and You Are Not Permitted to Board’
Southwest Airlines is under fire after refusing to allow a man, his husband, and their three children to board a Buffalo to Fort Lauderdale flight on Saturday, claiming they are not a family.
“This is for family boarding only,” Grant Morse says the gate agent told his husband Sam as he and his family stood ready to board. Morse says the agent “aggressively” told them they could not board, even after they explained they are a family, right down to the legal documentation of birth certificates to prove it.
“I felt like I was a criminal and I was humiliated,” Morse told WKBW, in the video above.
“We are a family,” Morse says his husband told the agent. He says it’s “blatant discrimination.”
After repeatedly telling the family they could only board during family boarding, Morse says the agent then took to the intercom to announce family boarding.
As they again tried to get on the plane the gate agent again told them, “This is for family boarding only and you are not permitted to board. This is only for family, and I told you that already.”
At that point Morse says he again told her, “We are a family,” explaining they are legally married and their names appear on their three children’s birth certificates.
The gate agent told them she could only allow one of the parents to board with the children.
WGRZ reports Southwest’s policy on family boarding is “vague,” and could be interpreted as allowing only one adult with children under six.
But it also seems clear, based on Morse’s remarks, the agent wasn’t invoking Southwest policy, but her own.
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Image by Tomás Del Coro via Flickr and a CC license