Airline suspends pilot over alleged threats to transgender student at Oklahoma school

Frontier Airlines has suspended one of its pilots for alleged involvement in making threatening comments against a transgender middle-schooler in Oklahoma.

School officials in Achille, Oklahoma - a town of about 500 people - called off classes for two days last week after they said a transgender student was threatened by adults on Facebook.

In a statement on Monday, Frontier spokesman Jonathan Freed said the pilot was suspended, pending an investigation into the alleged threats he made on Aug. 13. He was suspended after the airline learned of the situation, the Associated Press reported.

The airline did not identify the pilot, the AP reported. It did not specify what comments the pilot is alleged to have made on Facebook, either.

KFOR in Oklahoma City reported earlier that one of the comments made on a private Facebook page for parents read: “If he wants to be a female, make him a female. A good sharp knife will do the job really quick.”

School district superintendent Rick Beene, who called off classes last Monday and Tuesday, told local media the threats against the 7th-grader didn’t appear to have been made by people in the district.

“I can confirm the person is one of our pilots,” Freed said in his statement, according to KOCO in Oklahoma City.

“I believe there has been some conversation about him being a ‘bus driver’ perhaps because of how he described himself in an online profile — but I’m not certain of where it came from. Sometimes, pilots refer to themselves as ‘bus drivers.’ It’s a slang term in the industry.”

The statement, according to KOCO, said Frontier “prides itself on setting an example as a respectful workplace and we do not condone discrimination. We have long-established standards of conduct, to which all employees must agree to adhere, that among other things require people to act in a professional manner and to treat each other with genuine respect and kindness.”

The comments against the student spilled out into a public Facebook forum where they went viral, according to News 9 in Oklahoma City, and caught the attention of LGBTQ supporters across the country who sent the school and student’s family messages of support.

Brandy Rose, the student’s mother, told KXII the trouble apparently began after an incident on the first day of school earlier this month.

Two years ago Maddie began using the staff bathroom at school after another student accused her, falsely, of peeping under a bathroom stall in the students’ restroom, Rose told KXII.

This month on the first day of middle school in a building new to her, Maddie couldn’t find the staff bathroom, Rose told KXII, so she used the “girls bathroom one single time.”

A parent found out, posted it on the private Facebook group, and the threats took off. According to KXII, which showed screengrabs of some of the comments, people referred to Maddie as “it” and “thing.” One person wrote: “You know we have open hunting seasons on them kind. Ain’t no bag limit either.”

Beene said school officials consulted with local law enforcement, who asked that the schools shut down for part of last week because they were concerned about out-of-town demonstrators showing up and causing a disruption.

“The thought was, for law enforcement, that you can have an opposing group that might be here and that could lead to problems, so law enforcement asked me if we could shut down until Wednesday so they didn’t have to worry about those 360 kids in addition to what they were already having to deal with,” the superintendent told KFOR.

He told KFOR that even though the Facebook page where the comments bears the name “Achille ISD parent Group,” it was not affiliated with the school and that most of the people commenting don’t even have kids at the school.

He told local media students haven’t bullied their transgender peer.

“There were no problems at school with the kids. There were reports of bullying, totally false. Our kids have a great relationship with each other,” Beene told News 9.

Two Oklahoma City advocacy groups, Free Mom Hugs in Oklahoma City and Freedom Oklahoma, reached out to Maddie’s family, reports KOKH in Oklahoma City.

Sara Cunningham, the mother of a gay son who founded Free Mom Hugs, told KOKH she has offered to conduct LGBTQ sensitivity training in Achille.

“My heart just sank when I realized what was happening,” Cunningham told KFOR.

“But, I can say that, if one thing, one positive thing came out of that post is the exposure of the power of fear and ignorance, and I mean that term respectfully but that is a perfect example to the world of what fear and ignorance can do.”

Beene told KFOR he’s open to Cunningham’s offer.

“I need education; we all need to be educated,” he said. “It’s certainly something that people didn’t deal with 20, 30 years ago.”

This story was originally published August 14, 2018 at 11:26 AM.