I have to say, a company has to try really hard to somehow come out worse than the TSA in a customer dissatisfaction story. The customer does research online a

I have to say, a company has to try really hard to somehow come out worse than the TSA in a customer dissatisfaction story. The customer does research online and contacts both United and the TSA to get pre-approval of bringing the device onboard. At the airport, the TSA allowed it through their checkpoint. But he gets stopped at the gate because his itinerary actually reads: "passenger was advised he would NOT be allowed to board with device, and the device will not have to be checked, provided he can place device in overhead without crew assistance. Transferred passenger to TSA for clearance of device through security." As the author noted, one could read the itinerary note and work through the logic to recognize that it was likely a typo. Now, I can understand the gate agent being somewhat skeptical. After all, he deals with dozens of cases each day and doesn't have all the context of every situation so he probably falls back on past decisions to deny approval. So the author gets United's Special Needs Services on the phone to reaffirm that the device was fine and that he should be let on. The gate agent delegates to the manager. Again, without full context, the manager simply assumes the item can't be brought on despite what was mentioned by Special Needs Services. So in hopes of getting the answer he wanted, the manager contacts the TSA, and the TSA representative says device is perfectly fine. At this point, anyone could think to themselves, "okay those are two authorities who give the green light. I think that's perfectly fine." But no! The manager then elevates it to the authority of the pilot, who acts all polite in person but then eventually communicates that he won't allow the device onboard. Manager gets the verdict he desires and the author is screwed. First of, I would imagine that a special needs representative is far more adept at know which electronic devices would be safe onboard a vehicle than a pilot who is probably unlikely to know about every single new assistive device out there. But even if that were not 100% true, I think getting approval from the first two sources should've been good enough. Secondly, life is already really hard for those with physical disabilities. Especially when traveling, where there's a lot of stress on top of the unpredictabilities of the environment. So to be humiliated and endure additional physical pain for spurious reasons is quite inhumane, even for an airline. Third, before the topic gets onto the economics of airlines (as it always gets to when it comes to customer experiences), I'd like to underline that the manager literally had to go out of his way to find a reason to deny the special needs of this individual. This isn't a case where the manager had to make a quick decision and had go with previous experiences, this is a person who disregarded explicit approvals from other agencies in order to validate their own belief.