[Chicago Traveler]

My trip to spend Thanksgiving with family in Philadelphia started off with one of the worst if not the worst airline experiences in my life solely because of the abusive behavoir of one of your gate agents.

I was scheduled to travel on Weds evening November 24 from Chicago to Philly. I had made my reservation early enough to book exit row seats for myself and my family which I do whenever possible since I am 6'1" and have knees that get sore when cramped in the tighter spaces of regular coach. In fact when I had to make (expensive) changes to my trip I made sure that I kept the Emergency exit aisle for myself and my family.

Shortly before flight time I was paged to come to the ticket counter and then asked to give up my seats for some other passengers. I declined and cited that my knees get sore when cramped in the normal coach seat as part of the reason. The gate agent named Potts then slandered me, said I was incapable of operating the emergency exit and accused me of being so disabled that I shouldn't be seated in the emergency exit row simply because she wanted to deny me and my family our properly reserved seats and give them to someone of her choosing. She made it clear that she wanted to give my and my family's seat to someone else. This was highly provocative of her and I became indignant and agitated at such an arbitrary, capricious, unfair and unwarranted characterization. I told her that she was wrong and had no such right to call me disabled and walked away making it clear that I was in no way interested in changing my seats. I thought this was settled. After all I had properly made my reservations. And I am a perfectly fit middle aged man who shows no outward signs of being physically disabled in any way whatsoever. They asked me to change my sear and I said no. That should have been the end of it according to my understanding of the law and airline rules.

A few minutes later I was paged to the ticket counter a second time and told that my whole family was being reseated because they had determined that I was not fit to be seated in the exit row. This was an arbitrary, specious, capricious and bigoted decision that Potts made so she could play favorites with other passengers. She had absolutely no right to do that. I deeply resent her abuse of her position and the slander used to unfairly and unlawfully take from me something I had properly book and paid for.

When I demanded that they return the exit row seats to my other family members the gate agent started questioning me as to who was whom and I decided that enough was enough and fed up, grabbed the tickets she wanted me to take from her hand and went back to the seat where I had been waiting.

Then when I went up to board the plane I was denied boarding. The gate agent Potts then added insult to injury and again lied and falsely accused me of hitting the gate agent when grabbing the tickets from her, which I in no way did. If there is any film of this interaction it will show that. Potts then insisted that I apologize to the gate agent I had taken the tickets from or I would be turned over to the police! Obviously not wanting to miss the last flight to Philly that night on my way to celebrate Thanksgiving I acquiesced to this abusive and humiliating ordeal. The other agent then had the audacity to patronize me and condescendingly lecture me about giving up my seat as an act of kindness when I was being slandered and denied something that was rightfully mine so they could play favorites.

What they did was absolutely wrong. They unlawfully denied me of the passage I had rightfully booked, slandered me, falsely accused me of battery, threatened to call the police and falsely accuse me, and threatened to deny me boarding. In this day and age when travel is as difficult as it, they made things unnecessarily worse when they abused their position of trust. They deserve to have appropriately severe action taken. Particularly at a time when people are begging for jobs AA has the opportunity and obligation to all their stakeholders to make sure 100% of their staff is properly trained to treat their customers in a fair and appropriate manner and shun any sort of abuse such as was dealt to me and my family.

I have demanded that this Potts person be dealt with harshly. She is an overbearing, rude, bigoted, insolent and abusive sort who has no business being in a position where she's called on to be fair and impartial in dealing with people. She must reprimanded severely if not fired. I have insisted that I be copied on actions taken. At the very least she should be censured, fined subjected to appropriate retraining so that she understands that she may not abuse her position.