Parents forced to board plane separately experience discrimination

A gay couple claim they experienced discrimination after being told only one of them could board an EVA Air flight early with their 19-month-old daughter – even though straight parents with children were permitted to board together.

via Yahoo!

Jeff Cobb, his husband and daughter were flying from San Francisco to Taipei when the alleged incident took place.

As parents traveling with an infant they joined the priority boarding line, but were reportedly told by staff that only one parent could board the plane early.

The dad used Twitter to explain the incident:

EVA Air has since apologized, describing the “unfortunate incident” as a “misunderstanding”.

“EVA Air and most especially our San Francisco International Airport team sincerely apologise to all the passengers affected by this incident,” a spokesperson said.

“It is our policy that passengers travelling with infants can have priority boarding.

“The policy does not limit the number of accompanying adults or specify the relationship to the infant.

“This unfortunate incident was due to misunderstanding.”

The spokesperson went on to add: “Our San Francisco ground-handling agent understood that only one parent could board with an infant.

“We have apologised to our passengers and reminded our airport staff and agents about our priority boarding policy so that we can prevent this kind of incident from happening again.”