The Monday video of a United Airlines passenger being violently removed from his seat reminded me of my recent experience with United Airlines at the Des Moines airport, when I was also asked to leave by the security officer called upon by an agent of United Airlines. 

It happened on the early morning of Dec. 19. My husband, kid and I were going to Hong Kong to visit our families and we arrived at the airport two hours earlier than the departure time, 7:15 a.m. After waiting for more than an hour in line, I found that only a few people had successfully checked in and only one agent was working on that. And I had to say the agent was extremely slow.

I went up to ask her why it was so slow and whether we would be able to catch up the flight. She told me that three United agents called in sick that morning and they were in lack of staff. She also ensured me that the flight to Chicago that we were going to layover would wait for us, and no worries should I have. I believed her and went back to the line. By the time when it was getting close to 7:15 a.m., I went up to check with her again, and at that time two more agents showed up and started to speed up the check-in.

She told me the flight had already gone and I should call United customer service to re-book everything by myself, and believe it or not, there was no apology. I asked her why the flight didn’t wait for us as she told us earlier, and I also told her it might be their responsibility to re-book my flight because they didn’t manage it well. She simply said no because they needed to serve other customers.

I kept asking her to help me re-book the flight, but she said she needed to serve other people in line, and then she picked up the phone to call the security over. Please notice that there was no quarrel or argument. I was calm and polite to try to get help from her, and the agent appeared clam too. I quickly left the counter when a security officer showed up and asked me to leave.

Luckily the officer at the Des Moines Airport was polite and nice and didn’t drag me off or beat me. I then spent more than an hour on my cellphone with the United customer service, and our flights were re-booked to two days later. After hearing my complaint against the service at Des Moines Airport, the United customer service said coldly: “You should’ve arrived at the airport earlier to avoid this situation.” As if it’s all my fault. 

I couldn’t help wondering: Since when did calling police force become the airlines’ convenient means to serve them in resolving disputes with customers? When officers come, shouldn’t they listen to us — the individual tax payers and customer who pay for the service — rather than just listening to the airline agents and executing by their orders? 

By the way, I was finally offered a $100 Electronic Travel Certificate for all the inconveniences caused by re-booking after writing a letter of complaint to United Customer Care. My two days’ delay, taxi fares and cancelled meetings with my families all were just worth a $100 Electronic Travel Certificate per United Airlines. This is all you can get from a business with security officers standing behind flexing muscles in this civilized country.