Desmond Howard says ‘entitled’ flight passenger tried to remove him from plane

There have been lots of stories over the years from media people about bad experiences flying. But the video  ESPN College Gameday analyst Desmond Howard shared Sunday night, which has since received almost 900,000 views on Twitter, stands out. In a video taken while in flight, Howard relayed how one passenger on his flight tried to get him removed from the plane for apparent coughing (Howard says he was clearing his throat), and even tried to pull a “I am sure my status is higher than his”:

https://twitter.com/DesmondHoward/status/1635003591659499521

Here’s what Howard says there:

“So I’m on this American Airlines flight, and before we took off, this supervisor comes up and speaks to the guy sitting next to me. She says ‘You wanted to talk to me?’ He says ‘Yeah, I think you should remove this gentleman from the plane, because he’s sick,’ talking about me. And I said ‘Oh, I’m sorry, are you a doctor?’ He says ‘Well, you’ve been coughing all over the place.’ This is before we even took off, right? So I said ‘Well, you can leave the plane and take another flight, because I’m not leaving. All I was doing was clearing my throat.'”

“So Carol, the supervisor, she’s looking, and guess what card he tried to play? He said ‘I’m sure if you checked our status, my status is higher than his.’ So I said to Carol, ‘Yeah, check our seats and let me know whose status is the highest.’ And as you can see, I’m still sitting on this plane. As a matter of fact, we’re in the air right now. The Caucasity of him! Unbelievable. All right, everybody, you guys have a happy Sunday. Peace.”

Trying to big-time anyone with rewards status seems like a bad move in general. But it seems particularly foolish to try to do that to someone as prominent as Howard, who definitely takes a lot of flights for his ESPN work. And this definitely didn’t go the way the complainant thought it was going to. Howard did get a nice message of support from the American Airlines Twitter account, though:

We're always happy to have you on board with us!

— americanair (@AmericanAir) March 12, 2023

There are many potential takeaways from this story. But one of them may be “Don’t try to big-time Desmond Howard.”

[Desmond Howard on Twitter]