Opinion ID: 203101
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Denial of Rebooking

Text: During the questioning of the three men by the State Police, the Captain had communicated the situation to the systems operations control (SOC) manager in Dallas. The SOC manager was the only person with the authority to make a decision on whether a passenger who had been removed from a plane for questioning could be rebooked. At some point during the period, the SOC manager decided to deny rebooking to the plaintiff. He made this decision based on the information communicated to him by the Captain, which included the Captain's information from those involved with the investigation in Boston. The SOC manager communicated his decision to the AA customer service manager at Logan, advising her that the plaintiff was denied boarding and instructing her to refund his ticket. The customer service manager then made an entry into the plaintiff's passenger record at 9:01am, which stated that the passenger was denied travel on [flight] 2237 per SOC [manager] due to security issue. A few minutes later, at 9:08am, an employee at the SOC amended the record to note that the passenger was denied boarding . . . due [to] security issues. Refund ticket . . . Do not rebook on AA. It is the decision not to rebook that morning which is at issue. The three passengers were released at some point roughly around 9:00am. The passengers were escorted to the AA ticket counter, and one of the state troopers communicated to an AA agent that the passengers were free to go. Another trooper noted in the police administrative log at 9:00am that the three passengers were denied boarding [and] will be re-booked. After being escorted to the ticket counter, the plaintiff asked a reservations agent to rebook him. The reservations agent told him that there was an afternoon flight available, but that she was not authorized to make a decision to rebook. Approximately twenty to thirty minutes later, the customer service manager who had spoken to the SOC manager came to the ticket counter. The customer service manager asked for the plaintiff's credit card and refunded the Boston to Fort Lauderdale portion of his trip. When the plaintiff asked the customer service manager why he was not being rebooked, she told him that the decision had been made by AA's corporate offices. [8] For any further information, she informed the plaintiff, he would need to contact the corporate offices directly. Apparently, the other two passengers were also denied rebooking. The plaintiff then called other airlines to try and make alternate arrangements to fly to his home in Florida that day. All of the flights he found were expensive, so he did not book one. His parents came to pick him up at the airport and he returned to his parents' house in Fall River, Massachusetts. Later that day, the plaintiff wrote an e-mail to American Airlines customer service asking for any information they had about the incident, including what he was accused of saying on the plane, and the implications of the incident for his future travel with AA or any other airline. The following day, the plaintiff completed his journey on another airline without incident. Nine days after the incident, on January 6, 2004, the plaintiff received a response from a customer relations official at AA. The response stated that the airline had fully reviewed the decision to deny boarding and explained that it was because our personnel perceived certain aspects of your behavior which could have made other customers uncomfortable on board the aircraft. It informed the plaintiff that [t]here is no indication that you will be denied boarding in the future.