United Airlines tenders apology to Muslim woman for discriminatory attitude

United Airlines banned a crew member for allegedly providing a Muslim woman with an open soda can and tendered an apology to the Muslim female passenger for the discriminatory attitude. 

A Muslim woman by the name of Tahera Ahmad was subjected to discrimination by a flight steward, when she was handed an opened soda can. When she demanded an unopened soda can instead, the flight steward told her that they served only opened can so that passengers could not use them as weapons. However, a fellow passenger was given a closed soda can, to which the Muslim passenger objected.

The apology came when Northwestern University’s president demanded an open-ended apology from United and rejected their previous one. On Wednesday, United Airlines issued an apology to the passenger and took responsibility for the incident.

“While United did not operate the flight, Ms. Ahmad was our customer and we apologize to her for what occurred on the flight. United does not tolerate behavior that is discriminatory – or that appears to be discriminatory – against our customers or employees.”

Tahira Ahmad gave away the details regarding the incident on

a Facebook post and narrated what went down, when she was on a United flight that was enroute to Washington DC from Chicago. After the flight steward had told her that it was company policy not to hand over unopened cans to passengers as they could be used as weapons, but proceeded to hand unopened cans to others, she protested. Upon  her protest, another passenger abused her and told her,”You Muslim need to shut up.”

Ms.Ahmad stated that her aim was not to get the flight steward fired or have her services terminated. But that the airline admit its mistake and take correct measures in the future.

“I want to make it very clear to the public that my intentions are NOT to get the flight attendant who behaved very rudely towards me fired. I simply did not expect United Airlines to dismiss the unwarranted and unfortunate rude behavior, discrimination and hateful words but rather acknowledge their accountability and role in the painful experience and share corrective measures within their training to prevent this from happening again regardless of their race, religion, gender, sex, or socioeconomic background.”