HappyMomma

SEATAC, Wash. -- A woman with two disabled children said her family was left stranded by Southwest Airlines on their way to Seattle.


Wendy Slaughter was traveling with her four children and her five-months pregnant sister Friday on a Southwest Airlines flight from Detroit to Seattle.

One of Slaughter’s children has autism and she also has a daughter with cerebral palsy.


When the family landed in Phoenix they were met at the gate by police officers, detained and told they were too disruptive to get on their connecting flight to Seattle, Slaughter said.


Slaughter said they were left stranded at the Phoenix airport with no money and no lodging.


This was the first flight for the children. Slaughter admitted the children were loud and kept getting up and walking around the plane.


“The children were out of control on the flight you know, they were restless, excited and worked up and they are kids,” said Slaughter.


The family said flight attendants asked them to quiet the children twice, but they didn’t expect to be booted off the flight “I am furious about it. I can’t believe they could do something like that and then leave us completely stranded with no money no way to get anywhere,” Slaughter said.


Southwest Airlines spokeswoman Christi Day told KIRO-7:

"They were being disruptive and unruly on the plane, and for the safety of our customers and the flight crew, we decided to not allow them to travel on to Seattle at that time. Typically if it's a threatening behavior, it's not safe to travel 30,000 feet in the air in a contained environment."


The family said police officers bought them food and Motel 6 donated a hotel room for the night.


The children’s grandmother said she had to pay $2,000 to book last-minute tickets on Alaska Airlines. They said they didn’t have any problems on that three-hour flight.


The family said they want Southwest Airlines to compensate them and give a public apology.

Family Says Airline Left Them Stranded At Airport - News Story - KIRO Seattle

__________________
The quickest way for a parent to get a child's attention is to sit down and look comfortable.
~Lane Olinghouse

AmyBelle

If you cant control your children then a plane isnt the best thing to travel with them all on, regardless of disabilities.

Too many people lack common sense nowadays.

__________________

Sirk

I'm with Amy. Even if it's because of a disability, if your child can't behave in a setting they shouldn't be there. If they keep getting up on an airplane when they need to be seated, they are going to hurt themselves or others. And if they got hurt, the mom would prob sue the airline.

It would have been nice for Southwest to give them a room for the night or something, but what were they doing traveling with no money?

__________________
Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.
- Mother Teresa

http://www.crowdgather.com
http://www.flickr.com/groups/parentingforums/

BookWyrm

I'm going to have to agree with the airline on this ine, at least in part. In a perfect world though, I think the airline should at least have refunded the portion of the ticket price not used for the continued flight, as it seems they did not put down purposely to offload these particular passangers.

The line that gets me though is where the mother says "they are kids." It really bugs me whenever anyone uses that as an excuse for any situation where children aren't behaving well. That is parenting 101. It is not the airlines job to make sure my child behaves on the flight or to deal with it if he doesn't. It certainly did not sound like any of the problems were related to the special needs of any of the children. More that the mother just didn't think ahead of ways to keep them entertained while in their seats. Or of ways to let them move around while it was allowable where they would not be disruptive to the other passangers.

"They are kids." is, to me, often just a cop-out for lack of parenting responsibility.

__________________

cherrybibi251

Those children do not deserve to fly, special needs or not they were disruptive on the plane and that can cause safety concerns for other travellers.

Jessie

I'm not sure who I agree with. The airline wasn't specific in the way the children were "disruptive" but I'm inclined to believe that it was probably more than the mother claims.
And, if that's the case, then I feel the airline was right. The rest of the passengers/staff should not have to deal with someone else's unruly children.