A violinist accused United
Airlines of rough treatment after she refused to check her fragile 18th century
instrument as luggage, another potential black mark to the US carrier after an
infamous passenger dragging incident.
Yennifer Correia was traveling on Sunday from Houston, Texas to
a music rehearsal in Columbia, Missouri, when ticket agents told her that she
could not carry her circa late-1700s Italian violin onboard the plane,
Correia's attorney Phil MacNaughton told AFP on Wednesday.
The 33-year-old Venezuelan-born musician
offered to pay any fees and asked for options that would allow her to travel
with her violin, but a United supervisor tried to wrestle away the instrument
leading to a brief tussle, MacNaughton said.
"There's
an unspoken rule in the professional musician world: never let an airline stow
your instrument," the Houston-based attorney said, pointing to a US
aviation regulation that requires airlines to accommodate small musical
instruments as carry-ons onboard flights.
United Airlines did not
return a request for comment.
The allegations threatened the carrier's attempts to recover from
a public relations fiasco in April, in which a 69-year-old doctor was dragged
off an overbooked flight.
In that case, the carrier
settled with David Dao for an undisclosed sum, and promised a set of
operational changes to improve customer service.
He has also filed notice
with the airline and the city of Houston, which operates the airport, to
preserve any evidence of the incident - a common first step before a lawsuit is
filed.
No comments:
Post a Comment