A woman’s reasonable complaint, on finding that someone had vomited on her seat and the airline had failed to clean it properly, led to the airline having her arrested and removed from the flight.
That’s the way it looks following a startling series of events on US airline Frontier.
Rosetta Swinney, 53, was returning home to North Carolina from an Easter trip to Nevada with her young teen daughter. The flight from Las Vegas at McCarran International Airport was delayed for cleaning, and when Swinney and her daughter boarded, they found their seats were wet and smelled of vomit. Actual vomit got onto the daughter’s clothes.
When the mother complained, the flight attendant is accused of saying: “That’s not my job.”
In the video, the part filmed on the plane shows Swinney sounding measured, calm and reasonable.
Frontier Airlines and its flight attendant, however, say it was a clear case of a “disruptive” passenger who needed to be removed from the flight. Which is why police officers boarded the plane to do that.
https://youtu.be/m9mUzhbOAvQ
The Root, a US publication which focuses on African American issues, says multiple witnesses support Swinney’s version of what happened.
Some Facebook posts wonder if race entered the equation (Swinney appears to be African American).
Swinney and some other passengers say vomit was on the plane when passengers boarded and the flight attendant handed the passengers gloves and wipes to clean it up themselves. Swinney was not happy with that. Few passengers would be.
Swinney was arrested, jailed, and had to buy a USD 1000 ticket home on another airline, Delta. She will have to defend charges of misdemeanour trespass and failure to comply with airport rules.
Frontier Airlines later released a statement giving its side of the matter, quoted in full by The Root:
“During boarding of flight 2066 from McCarran International Airport (LAS) to Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU) last week, two passengers told the flight attendants that vomit was present in their seat area.
“The flight attendants apologized and immediately invited the mother and her teenage daughter to move to either end of the plane so that the seat area could be cleaned. The mother and daughter were also told that once boarding was complete they would be provided other seats if available. The daughter was also offered cleaning products and invited to use the lavatory to wash up. The mother was unsatisfied with the response and became disruptive.
“As a result, the flight attendants determined that the mother and daughter should be deplaned and accommodated on another flight. The mother refused, and following procedure, law enforcement was called. Law enforcement then requested that everyone deplane so that the mother and daughter could be removed allowing the aircraft to be re-boarded and depart. We apologized to our passengers for the inconvenience caused by the departure delay. The safety of passengers and crew is our top priority at Frontier.”
Written by Peter Needham
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