by OCA special correspondent Shawn Jain

As most of you who read this know, I have traveled a lot, especially in the past couple of years. I've been on many different airlines, ranging from SpiceJet, a small domestic carrier in India, to the world's largest airline, American Airlines. Like other South Asian, MIddle Eastern, and brown-skinned individuals, I am often submitted to extra checks. I was once questioned at San Juan airport for two hours by US Customs (and I am a US citizen, born and raised in California). I have been questioned for thirty minutes at London Heathrow. I get stares from employees, fellow passengers, and most disappointingly other people of color, who worry that I am going to hijack or bomb their plane. Every time i go to an airport in America, I am reminded of my status as a second-class citizen. As a 14th Amendment citizen.

But I find all of this tolerable. I don't accept it, but I tolerate it, like the way I suppose queer people are "tolerated" but not "accepted" in most of America. I don't have any other choice. Yet the treatment I received aboard US Airways this past weekend was simply deplorable and reprehensible. I am not one of those people who says, "I will never fly X airline again." But in this case, I am damn tempted to say so. Please consider your travel plans carefully if they do include US Airways (which merged with America West Airlines a few years ago).

Here is the letter I am writing to their CEO Doug Parker and the Department of Transportation:

Shawn Kumar Jain
July 2, 2007

Doug Parker
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
US Airways
400 E. Sky Harbor Blvd.
Phoenix, AZ 85034

Dear Mr. Parker,

I am writing this letter to request reimbursement and compensation for the totally unnecessary delays I encountered and racist treatment I received while attempting to fly from Washington Reagan (DCA) to Sacramento (SMF) on June 27, 2007 (see Appendix A for original itinerary). As soon as I received my itinerary, I realized that my last name had been incorrectly spelled “JIAN” instead of “JAIN.” I phoned US Airways Customer Support and asked that my name be corrected on the reservation so that I would not have any problems on the day of travel. The agent responded that although she could not change the name on the ticket, she had placed remarks in my reservation correcting the name. She further assured me that I would not face any problems on the day of travel.

I arrived at Reagan National Airport at 8:45 AM, which was 1hr 45min before the departure of flight #196 to Phoenix and waited in line so that I could check-in with an agent. A US Airways employee told me that since I had en e-ticket, I should use the self-service kiosk. I responded that I thought it would be best to check-in with an agent in case my name was still spelled incorrectly, and he said that I could make that name change in the kiosk (which is false). So I checked-in with the self-service kiosk with my confirmation number, and I realized that my name was still spelled incorrectly. There was no option to change my name, so I printed my boarding passes and told the agent that the names needed to be changed (so that I would not be harassed by TSA). The agent said very rudely that she could “not do any ticketing” and told me to go to the agent check-in line (where I had originally been waiting), which was at least 30 people long. I told her that I did not need ticketing, just my last name to be fixed, but she refused to help me, so I went to the agent check-in line.

After waiting in line for 45 minutes (it was now 10 AM, 30 minutes before my flight’s departure), Carmen Brock attempted to fix the last name on my reservation. After 10 minutes of trying, she said that she had changed the name but that the “computer would not let her print new boarding passes.” She told me to try to go through security and board the flight. I heeded her advice, but a very skeptical TSA agent wrote “SSSS” on my boarding pass as soon as he saw the discrepancy between my real name on my California Driver’s License and the misspelled name on the boarding pass. I was submitted to a humiliating pat-down check, where I was asked to take off my pants. As a person of South Asian descent, such checks are not rare, but to have to go through a near strip check because of the incompetence of Carmen Brock made it even worse.

Nearly in tears from this ordeal, I ran to the gate (it was now 10:25 AM), and Frank C., the gate agent scanned my ticket and told me that the boarding pass was invalid. Shocked, I told him that the agent had just tried to change my name on the reservation. He then said I did not have a confirmed seat on the flight and that I would have to wait in the 20-person “Special Services” line for re-issuing of my ticket. I replied that this would lead to me missing my flight, and he said that this was “not his problem.” I went to the back of the “Special Services” line, and heard the final boarding call for my flight. Despite my protests, no passengers would allow me to go to the front of the line, so I re-approached Frank, who told me he could not help me. I stood there helplessly as my flight departed.

I decided to return to Carmen Brock at the check-in area since she was the only US Airways employee who seemed willing to help me. She was shocked to find out that US Airways wouldn’t let me board, and she instantly tried to re-book me on another flight. She spent 30 minutes trying to find a new flight combination that would work, and finally was able to re-issue me a ticket from DCA to Philadelphia to Los Angeles and finally to Sacramento (see Appendix B for revised itinerary). I would arrive Sacramento at 9:37 PM, more than six hours after I was originally supposed to. Carmen then told me that the reason I was not allowed to board the flight to Phoenix at the gate was “her fault.” Apparently, when she changed my name on the reservation, she didn’t re-issue the ticket, which made the reservation invalid, so she could not print new boarding passes, and my seat was given up. Carmen did not apologize for what was clearly her mistake but instead noted how “hard to use the computer system has become since the merger.”

Because of delays in Philadelphia, my connecting flight to Los Angeles departed late, and I missed my connecting flight from LAX to Sacramento (United #314). I went to the US Airways ticketing area to try and get a seat on the last flight of the night from Los Angeles to Sacramento, but this line was nearly 50 passengers long. There were two agents and one supervisor attempting to serve this large volume of passengers. Laurel H., a US Airways ticketing agent at LAX, advised me that the last United flight was full and that I should try Southwest Airlines. I asked her if US Airways would reimburse me the cost of the Southwest flight, and said, “we should, especially after all you’ve been through.”

I finally arrived in Sacramento, CA at 11:40 PM on Southwest #2968, nearly 9 hours later than I had originally planned, which resulted in me missing key parts of the OCA National Convention I was due to attend.

As someone who has been a longtime US Airways flyer, I want to believe in your airline again. I have family in Charlotte and have flown on Piedmont, America West, and USAir/US Airways countless times. But on my recent trip to Sacramento, the utter incompetence of employees such as Carmen Brock and sheer insolence of others such as Frank C. was truly astounding. I completely understand when flights get delayed due to inclement weather, and I am not even too perturbed when there is a mechanical problem that leads to a minor delay. But to treat me like a criminal and delay me for nine hours because my last name was misspelled by one letter? That is truly absurd. Furthermore, two individuals who were also traveling with US Airways to the same OCA National Convention I was attending in Sacramento on a flight that left earlier in the day also had to change the names on their tickets, and they were able to do so with ease. One is Korean-American and the other is Taiwanese-American. Yet when a South Asian person has to change one letter in his last name, he gets delayed nine hours. That is simply racist. I am therefore asking US Airways to please do the following. Only then will I be able to believe that your alleged commitment to put “Customers First” is something more than a PR gimmick:

1. Reimburse me in the amount of $134.40 to cover the cost of my flight from Los Angeles to Sacramento on Southwest Airlines (see Appendix C for the receipt).
2. Reimburse me in the amount of $18.69 to cover the cost of meals I consumed en route to Sacramento as a result of being delayed for nearly 9 hours (see Appendix D for associated receipts).
3. Provide me with a complimentary, round-trip, first class ticket anywhere on the US Airways global network to a) cover the emotional distress I faced having to be submitted to racist treatment, a humiliating pat-down check, and having to miss key parts of the conference I was attending and b) give yourselves a second chance to show that you value me as a customer.
4. Enroll all of your employees in mandatory diversity training.

Sincerely,


Shawn Kumar Jain
CC: Aviation Consumer Protection Division, U.S. Department of Transportation, C-75, 400 7th Street S.W., Washington, DC 20590