United bounced me, too!
Columbia gal’s suit: Booted from top-class seat for no reason
A COLUMBIA grad spent big bucks to upgrade her seat on a United Airlines flight to London — only to be forced to the back of the plane and called a vulgar name by an airline employee, a new lawsuit claims.
Karen Shiboleth, who was moving to Britain to attend graduate school at King’s College, boarded a United plane headed to Heathrow Airport from Newark on Sept. 10.
She says she paid more than $3,000 and used 60,000 rewards points to upgrade her economy seat to business class, according to the suit filed Monday in Manhattan Supreme Court.
“The upgraded BusinessFirst ticket was to ease the burden of her move, improve the care and safety of her personal belongings, and provide convenience from the stresses that accompany moving — especially moving to a new country nearly halfway across the world,” court papers say.
But 10 minutes before takeoff, a United Airlines gate attendant got on the plane and “without explanation, demanded that plaintiff vacate her seat in United BusinessFirst and move to the back of the plane,” the suit alleges.
Shiboleth, 24 — who is the daughter of New York lawyers and pals around with a well-off Manhattan crowd that includes First Daughter Tiffany Trump, according to news reports — asked for an explanation.
But nobody would tell her why she had to move — or why she couldn’t just sit in any of several empty BusinessFirst seats.
The United staffer then took Shiboleth’s arm “without consent and forced” her to a middle seat in the back of the plane.
While the employee was hauling her to the back, she called Shiboleth “a ‘c--t’ in front of other passengers,” the lawsuit says.
The employee, “who was not even a flight attendant, evidently boarded the plane for the sole purpose of harassing, humiliating, embarrassing and physically accosting plaintiff in front of other passengers,” the suit maintains.
While the flight attendants were sympathetic to Shiboleth, they couldn’t explain what had happened. Shiboleth asked for a partial refund, but the employee who booted her to the back “ludicrously would only give a $750 voucher toward the future purchase of an electronic ticket on United,” according to court papers.
Shiboleth’s suit comes several weeks after a Kentucky doctor was bloodied and battered while being pulled off an overbooked United flight in a scene that went viral and sparked a massive backlash against the carrier.
Shiboleth, who is seeking at least $150,000, was not available for comment.
In a statement to The News, United said its “goal is to provide all of our customers with a great travel experience. We are aware of the filing and reviewing it, but due to pending litigation we are unable to comment further.”