After the embarrassing incident of United Airlines dragging a man off his seat to make place for one of its crew members, news reports of the cabin crew and airport officials behaving unethically and physically harming passengers have been in the news quite often. The latest incident is a Brooklyn couple, who were taken off from a JetBlue Flight after their 1-year-old daughter kicked the seat of a fellow passenger.
Brooklyn family booted
Mandy Ifrah and her husband, Tamir Raanan claim that they were sitting on a JetBlue flight scheduled to take off from Fort Lauderdale to Kennedy Airport when this incident took place.
The couple claims that they were de-boarded from a runaway ready flight after their one-year-old daughter kicked the seat of a fellow passenger. The airline has refuted these allegations and claimed that the Family was taken off the flight following a verbal argument, which contained threats to physically harm the people involved.
The incident took place last month. Ifrah states that after her daughter Eden had kicked the fellow flyer’s seat, the mother of three apologized to the fellow passenger and agreed to exchange seats. While Ifrah was focusing on calming down her daughter, all the passengers were informed that the flight was going back to the airport gate. Soon after the announcement, the woman claims that the airport security came on board to escort them out and asked them to gather their belongings.
While the couple kept asking for the reason for their dismissal from the flight, they claim that they were not given any.
Ifrah states that other passengers came to the support the family of five and said that they have done nothing wrong and requested the officials to take off the flight. A video of the incident was shot which showed a JetBlue flight attendant requesting the family to leave the airplane and Ifrah protesting against it.
However, their request was not kept, and the family ended up staying back in a hotel room while looking for another flight. Their luggage, however, was still on the plane and which they got back a week later. Later on returning to New York, the couple got to know that they have been barred from flying with JetBlue while the company looks into the allegations made by them.
JetBlue refutes allegation
JetBlue, on the other hand, has denied all claims made by Ifrah and Raanan. They maintain their stance that the family was taken off the flight after an argument started with a fellow passenger, which contained profanities, as well as physical threats on the part of the Brooklyn couple. JetBlue also stated that despite polite request to come off the flight the couple with their three children refused to deplane, which forced the cabin crew to bring in law enforcement officials.
