Alton Brown might have had a TV show called “Feasting on Asphalt,” but he draws the line at sitting on carpet. The celebrity chef and professional scarf aficionado was forced to slump against the wall in an over-capacity United Airlines lounge, so he called out the airline on Twitter. “Fifty bucks to sit on the floor?” he wrote. “Turns out there is a third class…your LA Club!”
The airline responded within 20 minutes, expressing its concern for the Good Eats host and his thinly carpeted inconvenience. Brown later added that there was only one United lounge open at LAX that day, but according to the LoungeBuddy app, it wouldn’t have mattered: both United lounges have one-star ratings. “If you don’t have room for folks, you ought not take their money,” he harrumphed.
Brown did not type anything else about the situation, so we have no idea whether he was rescued by a chair-carrying United worker or had to make a temporary shelter out of the complimentary newspapers. Some of Brown’s one million Twitter followers responded with puns (“Sounds like another episode of…GOOD SEATS!” one joker wrote, adding a #zing hashtag), by sharing their own United horror stories or reminding the airline who it was dealing with.
Brown isn’t the first traveler to encounter an over-capacity LAX lounge. A perennially shirtless DJ named Wayne G called the airline out a couple of weeks ago.
United never responded. Someone should probably check the lounge or follow-up to see how he handled this hardship.