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 Travel & Outdoors | November 2007 
Airline 'Discount' Charges Heterosexual Customers More
 WorldNetDaily.com
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| | 10% penalty applied if buyers don't get tickets from 'gay' site |
Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air have announced a new program that will charge heterosexuals 10 percent extra for their air travel to specific locations during the Christmas season.
The company actually offers the 10 percent as a discount but only if the purchaser obtains the ticket through a "gay" page of the company's website, a location not typically patronized by families seeking travel arrangements, according to an Idaho activist who was distressed by the offering.
Bryan Fischer, of the Idaho Values Alliance, told WND the company boasts of its "nondiscrimination" policies, but, "here they are blatantly discriminating against heterosexuals in their pricing structure."
Word of the discount came through an airline employee, who needed to remain anonymous because of concerns over retaliation. The employee reported the company had sent e-mails out announcing the "very soft launch" of the new promotion.
"They are giving preferences to male passengers who want to wear dresses on the planes, and giving them preference over married couples," Fischer said, noting families typically buy more tickets than individuals or pairs traveling together.
"It just doesn't seem like it's smart business for them to stick their thumb in the eye of the main passengers," he told WND.
He said he had called the company's reservations number and the clerk was unaware of the program and it didn't come up on the general list of discounts available to reservations agents, but he did verify that the "gay" page discount was valid – but only by going through the "gay" page.
"The only way you could take advantage of this is to self-identify as a homosexual, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. Otherwise you're out of luck," Fischer told WND.
The actual program, he noted, doesn't demand a person be homosexual, but is set up so that only those deliberately looking for "gay" travel options would find it.
A spokeswoman for the airline, Amanda Bielawski, returned WND's call requesting a comment, but didn't answer questions, noting that she didn't know about the program. Then she quizzed WND on who had given the news organization information on the program.
The airline also at some point after WND inquired changed the headline on the page from "Gay Travel" to "New York City on Sale" but it still appeared to be available only through a direct "gay travel" web page, and couldn't be located through the airline's general reservations web site. It wasn't listed on the page that was supposed to reference "promo/all_deals". The promotion appeared only under a page citing "gaytravel/LGBT-NYC-Sale." |
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