American Airlines Responds to Boosie Badazz’s Allegations of Racism

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photo: ArtisticOperations

American Airlines is now responding to a highly-charged, vitriolic attack from rapper Boosie Badazz.

Flying is a headache, though some situations are clearly worse than others.  In the case of Boosie Badazz, a missed connection that probably could have been handled better led to a pretty sticky situation.  Unfortunately, what happened next was pretty ugly.

It was a classic airport nightmare: Boosie’s in-bound flight arriving from Jackson, Mississippi, was late, and his connecting flight departing from Charlotte, North Carolina, left early.  In many cases, airlines will hold a flight to wait for connecting passengers — but not this time.

The rapper, whose real name is Torrence Hatch Jr., was denied entry onto the connecting flight and bumped to the next flight — which was the trigger for a tirade of accusations against American.

Unfortunately, that tirade included accusations of racism, some homophobia, and wishes for crashing American Airlines planes as well as the brutal death of the attendant denying entry (and his family).

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At a certain point, you start feeling sorry for the American Airlines employees in this situation.  But thankfully nothing went beyond this Instagram post.

Badazz does have a following of nearly 6 million Instagram followers, and the post itself drew thousands of comments.  That, coupled with the accusations of racism and borderline death threats, prompted American to issue a formal investigation and response.

American said they immediately initiated a full investigation into the matter.  “Torrance [sic] Hatch’s allegations concerned us, so we immediately began an investigation into his travel experience that included reviewing airport video footage,” the airline told Digital Music News.

First, the airline monitored its cameras and tracking systems, and confirmed that this was a pretty routine case of bad customer service.

“Mr. Hatch’s inbound flight from Jackson, Miss., to Charlotte, N.C., this past Saturday was delayed, and he arrived at the gate for his connecting flight to Grand Rapids, Mich., after the airplane door had been closed,” the company explained.

The airline noted that Boosie left his connecting flight at 2:32 pm EST, and made it to the connecting gate by 2:36.  But despite the rapid transfer, the door to the connecting flight was closed, and the rapper was denied entry.  Incidentally, the flight was scheduled to leave at 2:44 pm, though it ended up leaving at 2:41.

American said they denied Boosie and his family entry because they seal the doors 10 minutes prior to departure.  Adding to the infuriation, the rapper could probably see the connecting flight sitting on the tarmac.  That, coupled with the delay on American’s earlier flight, is enough to drive anyone nuts.

Still, it’s probably a stretch to blame this one on racism.