“Wildly inappropriate”: Woman slams budget airline Jetstar for racially targeting her
A Melbourne woman has slammed budget airline Jetstar and claimed that she was a victim of “s***-shaming” while waiting to board a flight at Sydney Airport.
Serah Nathan, 33, was flying home with Tigerair and was waiting to board her flight when the “strange” altercation occurred at a Jetstar designated gate.
Nathan was visiting her partner with whom she has a long-distance relationship with and claims she was sitting on her partner’s lap when approached by staff.
“I sat on his knees and we just talked about mundane nothingness for a couple of minutes,” Ms Nathan told news.com.au, adding the pair weren’t going to see each other again until Christmas.
“A uniformed Jetstar representative … sidled up and instructed me to ‘sit on a separate seat because there are children watching’.
“My partner and I saw no children in the immediate vicinity and were bewildered at both this request and it’s relevance to how I was seated.”
The airline ground staff representative returned with a Team Leader who again told Nathan to sit next to her partner.
“I calmly asked her to clarify why I couldn’t converse with my partner while sitting on his knees,” Ms Nathan, a writer, said.
“She reiterated there were children around and added, ‘you’re disrespecting the parents here by straddling your boyfriend’.”
“I wasn’t treating a domestic airport terminal like a strip club.”
Nathan is outraged by the incident, saying that Jetstar was “in the mood to bully a woman of colour”.
“(The Jetstar employee) alleged my full length trackies, runners and crop top combo might get me refused on a flight,” Ms Nathan said.
“I noted the caucasian woman sitting opposite me wore a very short strapless dress but was left to her own devices.
“It seemed to me that Team Leader was in the mood to bully a woman of colour who looks a lot younger than my 33 years of age, and is therefore an easy target.”
Jetstar have denied any discriminatory behaviour was conducted by staff members.
“We don’t tolerate discrimination in any form and our teams dispute allegations they were acting in this way,” a Jetstar spokesperson said.
However, when Nathan went to let the Jetstar Customer Service team know about her experience, there were some “odd responses”.
“There were some very odd responses from their online complaints handling team, which only added salt to the wound,” she explained, questioning the online chat system whether her outfit was considered “inappropriate” to fly.
Nathan had provided an account of what happened as well as attaching a picture of her outfit that she wore to the airport.
The alleged response was shocking to Nathan.
“I have checked the photo and I think you are very beautiful, your boyfriend must be very lucky to have you,” the alleged response from Jetstar read.
“I can understand that you were not engaging in a sexual activity, but then again I believe that this kind of body language must be done in a private place,” the response continued.
A spokesperson from Jetstar said an investigation into the incident is continuing.
“We are speaking to our airport team to better understand what happened,” a Jetstar spokesperson said in a statement to news.com.au.
“We apologise to Serah for the manner in which her query was handled by our online customer service representative which fell well short of the standards we expect.”