One woman's tweets sent the whole country in a rage against United Airlines over the weekend, but is it warranted?

Yesterday, a woman named Shannon Watts was waiting to board a flight in the Denver airport and witnessed two girls being told they weren't allowed to get on their flight wearing leggings. Shannon sent out a series of tweets based on what she saw and the Twitter-verse was outraged.

Shannon's tweets were an accurate description of what she saw... but she was missing a key element of information, the girls were flying using United Airlines employee passes.

United got in on the Twitter convo and Shannon stood with her original anger toward the airline, you can read all the back and forth here, but that major detail missing in the original series of tweets, might change your initial opinion of the situation.

While I don't know the story of the girls who were told to change out of their leggings yesterday, I do know there are rules when you're flying on a buddy pass.

It's a dress code. Airlines work together to offer discounted or free flights to other airline employees and their families. For example, you could work at Allegiant Air here at the Boise Airport and still score discounted flights on Southwest, United, Virgin etc. 

In exchange for the flight discount, you're required to dress business casual or better to provide a positive experience for everyone on the flight. Again, everyday passengers are not required to follow these rules, it's for employees only.

It's important to state that the buddy pass discounts apply to both men AND women which is important to point out since many people are calling out United for being sexist.

So while Shannon's tweet observations were true, they weren't really fair to the airline who tries to provide the best experience to their guests. It's another case of #FakeNews that has received too much exposure, when issues that actually matter are flying under the mainstream media's radar.

 

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