An American woman complaining to a Norwegian airline employee about her lost luggage ended up berated about Donald Trump as well as assaulted and threatened with arrest for attempting to take the employee’s photograph.
Leah Segedie is not even a Trump supporter.
“She said that everything is my fault because of the President of the United States,” Segedie said in a phone interview with Photography is Not a Crime.
“I was like, what does Trump have to do with my luggage?”
The incident took place Monday near the boarding gate at Gatwick Airport in London as Segedie was preparing to board a flight to Los Angeles after spending 12 days in Norway visiting relatives with her 13-year-old son.
She said Norwegian airlines sent her luggage to Rome while flying her and her son to Bergen, Norway. She then spent four days in a remote area of Norway unable to purchase clothes in her size, having to wash her underwear by hand.
“I had to put on wet underwear every morning,” she said.
Segedie, who runs the mom blog Mamavation, said Norwegian Air Shuttle did not return her messages for several days so she began tweeting about her ordeal to the more than 100,000 followers that follow her.
“We probably created like 3 million impressions just trying to get their attention,” she said.
But she believes the social media backlash resulted in the airline flagging her ticket with an SSSS code, requiring her to go through additional security screening upon her return on several occasions before being allowed to board the plane.
”It’s like literally every stop I did, they swiped me for bomb residue,” she said. “This happened umpteenth times.”
“They were harassing me for complaining on Twitter about them losing my luggage for four days and ignoring me.”
When she arrived at Gatwick Airport from Bergen Airport, she was directed to an Norwegian employee at the baggage counter to file a complaint.
But the employee berated her about Donald Trump instead of taking her complaint. When Segedie asked for the employee’s name, the employee refused to give it to her.
“That was when I took my camera out and attempted to take a picture of her and she struck me,” Segedie said.
“She struck me with her hand and then she started screaming at me that she is going to have me arrested.”
Segedie managed to take one photo as she was assaulted which she said shows the arm of the employee striking her but it’s impossible to tell otherwise.
Segedie said an airport security guard then came over to try and diffuse the situation but the woman continued threatening to have her arrested for taking the photo.
Segedie agreed to delete the photo but it only went into the “recently deleted” file on her iPhone so she was able to retrieve it.
The woman then began taunting Segedie, daring to take another photo, threatening to have her arrested if she did. The security guard ordered her to sit down and seemed unsure of how to proceed.
Her flight began boarding so she made it onto the plane when they were not looking. Once seated,, she went into a panic attack and started crying and was having trouble breathing.
“The whole plane ride I was freaking out that I would be arrested when I get to LAX,” she said. “I had not idea what to expect.”
Upon landing and clearing customs with no problem, she approached two Norwegian employees and told them about her confrontation with the woman at Gatwick.
“They both looked at each other and said to me, ‘a lady just walked up to us five minutes ago and told us the almost exact same story so you’re not the only one.'”
However, her luggage did not make it to Los Angeles with her on the flight.
“I’m still waiting for my luggage,” she said.
