"I refuse to stand by without speaking out on this disgusting display of injustice and deplorable treatment," the football star said
Another airline is in hot water for its treatment of a passenger. Terrell Davis, a former Denver Broncos NFL player who was the MVP of Super Bowl XXXII and a 2017 inductee to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, was detained in front his family by the FBI after he says he asked a United Airlines flight attendant for a cup of ice on a flight from Denver to Orange County, California.
Davis detailed his side of the incident in an Instagram post on Monday. He said that after asking for the cup of ice for his son, he tapped the flight attendant on the arm to get his attention after thinking he hadn’t been heard. Then, he says, the flight attendant told Davis “don’t hit me” before heading to the back of the plane. When the flight landed, FBI agents and local police arrested, handcuffed him, and led him off the plane. The FBI’s Los Angeles field office, which helped initiated the arrest, confirmed to CBS News that Davis had indeed been briefly detained before being released.
Though Davis is Black, he did not explicitly say that the incident was racial in nature. He did say he had“hard conversations” with his family about what occurred.
“I refuse to stand by without speaking out on this disgusting display of injustice and deplorable treatment by United Airlines,” Davis wrote on Instagram.
The ordeal is reminiscent of what a group of Black American Airlines passengers went through, having been removed from their flight under what they claim were false accusations of “offensive body odor.” They sued American, and the carrier’s CEO has apologized. Davis said that his legal team are in contact with United.
In a statement provided to Quartz, United Airlines said that “this is clearly not the kind of travel experience we strive to provide, and we have reached out to Mr. Davis’s team to apologize” and that “we have removed the flight attendant from duty while we closely review this matter.”
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