Two sisters who were to travel on board an Allegiant Airlines flight from Orlando, Florida, to Asheville, North Carolina, were reportedly kicked off the flight after the duo were deemed a threat by the in-flight staff. According to CBS Orlando affiliate WKMG, the incident allegedly happened earlier this week on Monday. The sisters, later identified as Debbie Hartman and Trish Baker, were on board the aircraft to visit their ailing father who was in Asheville in hospice care.
https://twitter.com/claggett_amy/status/817166850991816705
According to reports, once the duo were inside the aircraft, ready for take-off, Trish received a text message on her phone which informed them about her father’s worsening condition. The text message had announced that her father had only a few hours left to live. Trish and Hartman were, however, sitting separately on the flight and since the aircraft was about to take off, she was wondering whether her sister also received the same text message. She instinctively got up to tell her sister about the message — and was immediately asked by the flight attendant to sit down.
“I didn’t know if my sister was getting the same text and was I thinking, ‘I need to go back and tell her,”‘ Baker recalled.
According to Trish, she just wanted to console her sister by sitting next to her. According to her, the flight attendant ordered her to sit down.
“She said, ‘You need to sit down,’ and I said, ‘Well, can I just sit here? I just want to console my sister. We just got word that my dad’s dying,’” Baker added.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jGNrEsZ5YU
Meanwhile, after she heard of the worsening condition of her father, Debbie started having a panic attack on-board the aircraft, which only worsened the situation. According to both the sisters, the flight attendant was not compassionate towards them, even after hearing about the health of their father. According to Hartman, the flight attendant asked her to “keep her personal problems off the plane.”
“She said, ‘You’re being very rude. My father is dying and I’m comforting her’ — and they said she needed to keep her personal problems off the plane,” Hartman said.
After the incident occurred, the flight attendant called the captain out, and the plane was turned around and went back to the apron. Airport security were called in and both the sisters were escorted out of the flight. When questioned, authorities told them they were escorted as the aircraft staff felt they were a threat to the flight.
“They told us we were a threat to the flight. I couldn’t believe it,” Hartman said.
“People were like ‘what’s going on?’” Hartman added.
A few hours after the sisters were to land at Asheville, their father passed away without seeing his daughters. Now, both the sisters want Allegiant Air to be held accountable for the situation.
“I would like to see them in some way be punished in a way where people understand. This is not humane. One hundred thousand percent I blame them. They were the gate between keeping me from my father to say goodbye,” Hartman said.
The sisters did get support from several people who termed the incident “inhuman and deplorable.”
Hey @Allegiant that’s not how you do business! … Sisters kicked off Allegiant Air plane on way to see dying dad https://t.co/tIS7WCzE5h
— Fernando RamosTzompa (@FernandoRTzompa) January 5, 2017
Meanwhile, Allegiant Air has issued a statement following the incident.
“At Allegiant we rely on our crew members to provide and oversee a safe environment for every passenger, on every flight. We expect that authority to be exercised both judiciously and consistently, with empathy and with good judgment. We take this customer feedback seriously and are in the process of conducting an investigation into what occurred.”
Do you think it was a correct action on part of Allegiant Air to remove the passengers considering the situation they were in?
[Featured Image by David Becker/AP Images]