You can't make this stuff up

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/woman-united-gave-first-class-s...

Passenger claims United booted her from first-class seat — then gave it to Texas congresswoman

Simon snapped a photo of Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee in what she said was the seat she paid for. 

 (FACEBOOK)

BYTERENCE CULLEN

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Sunday, December 24, 2017, 3:29 PM

A passenger on a Washington, D.C.-bound flight accused United Airlines of giving up her first-class seat to a Texas lawmaker.

The airline then threatened to pull her from the plane entirely after she snapped a photo of Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, the woman told the Houston Chronicle.

“It was just so completely humiliating,” Jean-Marie Simon, 63, told the Chronicle of the flight.

She was returning to Washington, D.C., on Dec. 18 — the last part of a return trip from Guatemala — when she went to board a connecting flight in Houston.

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When an attendant scanned her printed ticket at George Bush International Airport, however, Simon was told it wasn’t in the flight system.

She told the attendant she didn’t cancel her flight, which at that point was delayed for an hour because of bad weather.

Simon’s 1A seat was taken, the attendant reportedly told her. So she got an Economy Plus class seat in row 11, plus a $500 voucher, the Chronicle reported.

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It was only later that Simon, a lawyer and teacher, found out Jackson Lee (D-Texas) was in the seat she purchased.

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Simon accused United of giving the Houston lawmaker preferential treatment.

She saw Jackson Lee enter the plane before any other passenger — unaware at the time who she was.

A passenger later told Simon who Jackson Lee was, so she took a picture of the lawmaker in her front-row seat.

United has come under fire for a series of passenger-related incidents this year.

 (DAVID J. PHILLIP/AP)

Jackson Lee, in a statement to the Chronicle, denied she got special treatment from United.

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She recalled overseeing Simon speak with an African-American flight attendant about the seat snafu — and suggested her ire was because a black woman had taken her seat.

“Since this was not any fault of mine, the way the individual continued to act appeared to be, upon reflection, because I was an African-American woman, seemingly an easy target along with the African-American flight attendant who was very, very nice,” Jackson Lee told the newspaper. “This saddens me, especially at this time of year given all of the things we have to work on to help people.”

Simon told the Chronicle there wasn’t a racial motivation behind her complaint.

“I had no idea who was in my seat when I complained at the gate that my seat had been given to someone else,” she said. “There is no way you can see who is in a seat from inside the terminal.”

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A different flight attendant approached Simon five minutes later, she said, asking if she “was going to be a problem.”

All Simon wanted to do was return to Washington, she told the Chronicle.

The flight finally left just before 1 p.m., but Simon recalled still being bothered upon her arrival.

So she penned a note to United CEO Oscar Munoz, which she then posted on social media.

Someone from the airline later called and apologized several times, she told the Chronicle.

Jackson Lee denied she got preferential treatment on the flight.

 (CLIFF OWEN/AP)

But she and United offered differing stories about why she was bumped.

The airline, in a statement, said Simon’s reservation was canceled after United announced a weather-related flight delay.

“As part of the normal pre-boarding process, gate agents began clearing standby and upgrade customers, including the first customer on the waitlist for an upgrade,” the airline said in its statement.

Simon provided the Chronicle with a screenshot showing the most recent canceled flight was from August, when she scraped a trip to Houston because of Hurricane Harvey.

A spokesperson for the airline explained to the newspaper that the cancellation would be absent because Simon eventually got on the plane.

The representative provided a still from United’s corporate system, showing Simon’s seat was canceled via mobile app, but it couldn’t be verified by the newspaper.

"It's just impossible to suspend disbelief and swallow that story that I canceled my flight," Simon told the Chronicle.

United came under fire this year, after cellphone video captured guards dragging a Kentucky doctor out of a packed flight in Chicago.

Two officers in the dragging were later fired, with a third official resigning. It prompted United to review its policies for handling crowded or overbooked flights.