Passenger claims United gave away first-class seat to Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee

Source: The Hill | December 24, 2017 | Julia Manchester

A woman on a United Airlines flight from Houston, Texas, to Washington, D.C., accused the airline of giving her seat away to Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas).

The airline and the lawmaker denied the claim, and Jackson Lee suggested racism was involved in the complaint.

Jean-Marie Simon said she had purchased a first-class ticket for the last leg of her trip from Guatemala to Washington earlier this year on Dec. 3, when she was told by a flight attendant at the gate that her ticket was not in the system.

The airline issued Simon a $500 voucher and she was reassigned to the plane’s economy section.

United issued a statement saying that after an investigation, they found that Simon appeared to have canceled her flight.

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She went on to point out that the flight attendant, who was black, was an easy target for Simon. 

“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,” she said. 

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Simon pushed back on the statement, telling The Houston Chronicle “I had no idea who was in my seat when I complained at the gate that my seat had been given to someone else.”

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