![]() Kid-free ‘Quiet Zones’ launched on airline Zehavi said Southwest Airlines is attempting to cover up an unprofessional and rash decision by saying their group was not cooperating with the crew, when in fact they were, he said. “I think if it was a group of non-religious kids, the air stewardess wouldn’t have dared to kick them off.” I’m not someone to make these kinds of statements,” Zehavi said. “They treated us like we were terrorists I’ve never seen anything like it. Student Jonathan Zehavi said he felt they were targeted because they are an identifiably Jewish group. “They just simply said ‘get off the plane,’” Beyda said.īeyda’s Twitter account included a joking photo of the class labeled “whitewater rafting in Milwaukee!!” It’s not clear when it was taken, but some of the students did have a layover in Milwaukee after they were put on other flights. And when he saw that the flight attendant was flustered and had asked students to leave, he asked which kids were causing issues and offered to help, but she refused. Rabbi Joseph Beyda, another chaperone, said none of the students on the plane was particularly loud or disruptive. Wielgus said a “small group” of students in the back of the aircraft were chatty, but that did not warrant the flight crew to force an entire group of 109 people off the plane. Wielgus said she would understand if individual students who were not complying had been asked to leave, but she objected to the collective punishment. Wielgus said the flight attendants were “nasty,” “overreacting” and “created an incident when there didn’t have to be one.”Īccording to Southwest Airlines, the group violated safety regulations. “They certainly did not do what the stewardess was claiming they did,” she said. It was a mountain out of a molehill,” said teacher Marian Wielgus, one of the chaperones.Īccording to Wielgus, some students may have had to be told twice to sit down or turn off their phones, but everyone listened. Students and chaperones from the Brooklyn-based school said the flight crew overreacted to the teenagers who were looking forward to visiting Six Flags and rafting, among other activities. Southwest Airlines acquired AirTran in a deal announced three years ago. ![]() When the students failed to comply with requests from the flight crew, including the captain, they were asked to leave the plane, delaying the AirTran flight for 45 minutes, said Southwest spokesman Brad Hawkins. Southwest, which owns AirTran, said the group of “non-compliant passengers” would not stay seated, and some were using their mobile devices after being asked not to. “Preliminarily, it does not appear that the action taken by the flight crew was justified.”įrom the airline’s perspective, it sounds like a large-scale version of the parental “don’t-make-me-turn-this-car-around” scenario. “We take this matter seriously and have started our own investigation,” said a statement released Tuesday by Rabbi Seth Linfield, executive director of the Yeshiva of Flatbush school. The controversy now pits the airline against an Orthodox Jewish high school. One hundred one students and eight chaperones were kicked off an early morning AirTran flight before its scheduled departure Monday. 22-00265.The dispute surrounding a student vacation flight from New York to Atlanta is getting uglier. District Court, Eastern District of New York, No. The case is Reading v Southwest Airlines Co et al, U.S. ![]() The flight attendant, two gate officials and the pilot, none of whom is identified by name, are also defendants. Reading's lawsuit alleges violations of the federal Air Carrier Access Act and various civil rights laws. Heuser said Southwest's "hostile and abusive" conduct reflected a "COVID insanity" that should not override federal laws protecting people with medical disabilities. Kristina Heuser, a lawyer for Reading, in an interview said a "planeload full of witnesses" saw the encounter, and some may have videotaped it. She said nearby police helped her to a chair and offered water, while commenting that similar occurrences were "happening far too often" and "it is usually Southwest." Reading said a gate attendant eventually ordered her off the flight, as an unmasked pilot "laughed mockingly" as she tearfully exited. In her complaint, Reading said that she offered to show the attendant her medical exemption card but was told, "we don't care," and that the attendant objected to her later sipping water by shouting: "You were talking!"
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