On June 25th, Tiarra Dowdell encountered racism from a white passenger that made a scene when she was assigned the seat next to her.
What We Know:
- Tiarra Dowdell was trying to get home to Detroit but her flight had been delayed 12 hours. Because of this, she was placed on Spirit Airlines flight NK 446 to Chicago.
- In her Facebook posts, Dowdell explained what happened. “I board the Chicago fight and the open seat they gave me was next to a Russian woman, who refused to let me sit by her. Like refuses it to the point that she is arguing with the flight attendant about how she is not going to le me sit by her.”
- To accommodate the woman, Dowdell switched seats with a white passenger and the woman made no fuss about the change.
- The flight attendants thanked Dowdell for being a “team player” but that didn’t do anything for her humiliation and anger. “I shouldn’t have needed to switch seats to accommodate her choice of what race she wanted next to her and her husband.”
- Apparently, the woman apologized to Dowdell after the flight and advised that she was only upset because she was told that seat was going to be open. She stated that it had nothing to do with race. That seemed like an empty apology and an attempt to save face since the other passengers booed her and called her a racist.
Spirit Airlines is doing an investigation into he situation since they say they have a “zero tolerance discrimination of any kind on our flights”. We’ll see if they can rectify the situation.
