Entitled Dad Claims Airline Deplaned Family Over Twitter Complaint

Marketing executive and epic douche-bag Duff Watson says he will never fly Southwest Airlines again after claiming that he and his two children were removed from a flight and refused reentry until he removed an negative tweet from his Twitter account. Call me crazy, but I’m guessing there is way more to this story than what’s being reported. According to CBS Local:

“Duff Watson says he was asked to de-board a flight from Denver to Minneapolis with his two kids on Sunday after an agent didn’t like a tweet he wrote about her service.

Watson and the agent had a disagreement before boarding initially.

”I was left, you know, very upset, very embarrassed, very humiliated,” Watson said.
He’s an ”A-List” passenger, which means he gets priority boarding. But a gate agent wouldn’t let his 6-year-old and 9-year-old board with him ”” so they’d all have to wait to board later.
”In leaving I said, you know, ”˜Real nice way to treat an A-list. I’ll be sure to tweet about it,’” he said.

And that’s just what Watson did.
”Something to the effect of, ”˜Wow, rudest agent in Denver. Kimberly S, gate C39, not happy @SWA,’” he said.
Soon after getting to their seats, the family of three was asked to leave the plane.

”[She said] her safety feels threatened at this point because of what I tweeted,” Watson said.”

Even as reported, I think the whole situation is ridiculous. Only the dad had “A-List” status (aka the most pretentious name for priority flyers ever), so I can understand why the kids weren’t allowed to board early. Was the agent rude? Who knows, but this guy sounds like the biggest pain in the ass ever, so I’m sure she was just doing her job. Naming her directly and telling his followers exactly where to find her seems petty, if you ask me. And a cursory glace at Watson’s Twitter account tells me he is the king of petty Twitter complaints.

But as douchey as this dude is, forcing him and his kids off the plane is a crazy overreaction, and if it’s true, I’m not sure what they expected to accomplish. Yes, Watson did eventually delete the tweet, but he’s a professional trouble maker, and the stink he’s caused over this is way worse than anything that would have happened if they had just ignored him completely. If Southwest really did strong arm this guy over a silly tweet, they turned what should have been just another entitled voice in the darkness into a huge snafu. “IF” being the important word here.

I can’t imagine that this is the entire story. As I said, a quick look at Watson’s Twitter account tells us he’s adept at using social media as a tool to get corporate attention. In addition to his Southwest Airline tweets:

There are numerous other tweets aimed at other companies:

They’re not all negative, but he’s clearly a fan of trying to get free stuff out of companies through social media hounding, and he’s pretty good at it. Which makes sense, seeing as he’s a marketing exec. But pardon me for being skeptical of his story, because it just doesn’t add up. I think he’s full of it, but I guess it doesn’t matter. Southwest won’t call him on it for fear of bringing even more bad attention to the company, and Watson gets to ride off into the sunset with his lame $50 vouchers. All I know is that everyone involved in this story sounds awful.