Australian Lesbian Couple 'Humiliated' On Major Airline

An Australian lesbian couple was flying business class from Brisbane to Melbourne with their daughter on Qantas airlines recently when they encountered what 35-year-old lawyer Kristina Antoniades (one woman in the couple) called "blatant" homophobia." 

In an emotioal Facebook post following the incident, Antoniades said that she and her partner, Merrin Hicks, double checked the day before to make sure they were sitting together and with their daughter, Lily. As they made their way through the airport, Hicks was called over the intercom to go to Customer Services.  "Merrin was advised that Qantas had made the decision to move her seat to another row so that a married couple could sit togehter," the post reads. "They (the airline) did not acknowledge that we were a family and wanted to sit together." 

Mirror reports that after the couple told airline workers they would not be changing their seats, they were issued their original boarding passes and boarded the flight. 

That should have been the end of it. But after the flight took off, "the Flight Manager asked why Merrin was seated next to the man and his wife seated behind them," Antoniades's post reads.

"I again advised the Flight Manager that we were a family and wanted to be seated together. She asked me why I had taken it upon myself to move the Wife away from her Husband. I advised her that we were in our designated seats. She demanded to see our boarding passes. We produced them and again she asked why we were not allowing the married couple to be seated together. I again told her that Merrin was my Partner and Lily our daughter. I told her we had just as much right to be seated together as the married couple." 

After the confrontation, Antoniades says that the flight manager "simply walked away" and did not apologise. She said the experience left her in tears and feeling humiliated. “I have never experienced such blatant discrimination. It was a terrible experience and I am saddened that our daughter had to witness this,” she wrote.

Since the story broke, Antoniades seems to have changed her Facebook privacy settings and the original post is no longer viewable. 

A spokesperson for Qantas told SBS that the confrontation had nothing to do with homophobia: “It was an unfortunate misunderstanding, a mix up." 

Courtesy images.