told KQED<\/a> he, his wife and two daughters arrived at San Francisco International Airport several hours before their flight to Montreal to resolve a ticketing error after his wife accidentally entered one daughter’s middle name in the last-name field while booking a United ticket for a flight operated by Air Canada.<\/p>\nAfter spending about three hours at ticketing counters, Varela said an Air Canada agent was trying to help but needed United to release the ticket in its system.<\/p>\n
According to Varela, the United employee then responded, “I’m not dealing with it, ain’t my problem.”<\/p>\n
“That is when I was like, man, you’re so lazy, so rude,” Varela told KQED. “And she was like, ‘Why are you calling me this?’ I go, ‘Yeah, what’s your name?’ That’s when I pulled out my phone.”<\/p>\n
As the argument escalated, the employee is seen stepping out from behind the counter while recording Varela on her phone. The video appears to show her pushing his hand away before his recording ends.<\/p>\n
The footage also shows the employee wearing a badge identifying her as an International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union steward. Varela said she refused to provide her name.<\/p>\n
“We are aware of a video being circulated online, but we have no verification of its authenticity or the full context,” the IAM Union said in a statement to KQED. “As depicted, the comments made in the video do not reflect the views or values of the IAM Union. Any potential matters arising from this incident will be handled through the appropriate processes established by the collective bargaining agreement.”<\/p>\n
United Airlines declined to answer KQED’s specific questions but said in a statement it is “looking into the interaction in this video.”<\/p>\n
Varela described the encounter as “very hateful” and “racist,” saying that as a U.S. citizen who owns a business, pays taxes and employs people, he found the employee’s comments especially offensive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN FRANCISCO (TNND) \u2014 A video showing a United Airlines employee telling a passenger she might call federal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-405642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}