Finding out which airline has this issue

July 18, 2012 10:18 AM

Would this be an appropriate AskMe? If not, do you know an alternate way to pursue the info? (The "doctors can't be women" airline thing.)

A Twitter user posted that a certain airline can't let female passengers select Dr. rather than Mrs., Ms. or Miss. (The airline explained to his female friend that selecting Dr. defaults a passenger's sex to male in their registration system and therefore isn't possible for a female passenger.)

His post exploded, 500+ retweets and 1000+ @-replies, most asking him which airline. He seemed bemused and amazed by the attention, but his response was that his friend doesn't want to name and "shame" the airline.

I'm guessing people are so intensely engaged here because
1) it looks like we happened to get one nugget of a report out of countless times this happened to other women, and
2) it sounds like it's the result of a programming choice that would be easily fixable if the airline gets enough customer pressure/publicity.
Those two things combine into a burning desire to know where it's happening.

Is there a way of finding out which airline it is, without subjecting this guy or his friend to further unwanted attention? I want to make an AskMe, but I'm asking in MeTa because there's a both a smaller community here and maybe guidance about some approach I'm not thinking of.

Needless to say: please avoid identifying him in the comments here! I want to identify the airline, not bother the guy more...

posted by sparrows to Etiquette/Policy at 10:18 AM (5 comments total)

Sounds like an urban myth "friend of a friend" thing that wouldn't really be appropriate for AskMe.

Or for MetaTalk, for that matter.
posted by Curious Artificer at 10:21 AM on July 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

That reeks of hoax.
posted by Ardiril at 10:22 AM on July 18, 2012 [3 favorites]

I dont think this is what Metatalk is for.
posted by Justinian at 10:28 AM on July 18, 2012 [3 favorites]

I could swear I read a blog entry about a situation like this a while back; the doctor, who was a woman, got a run-around from an airline phone rep who couldn't/wouldn't realize the Doctor who purchased the ticket was the lady they were talking to, or something like that. I think it would be an appropriate AskMe - far more than this MeTa is.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:31 AM on July 18, 2012

MetaTalk isn't really for MeFi or AskMe posts by proxy. You can ask this in AskMe but realistically doing this and saying "don't name the guy" isn't going to work terribly well. I'm going to close this. You can put it in AskMe in a much more "How would I find this out?" way. People are going to tell you to go try flyertalk and they are probably right on.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 10:32 AM on July 18, 2012 [1 favorite]