NEW YORK, July 19 (Xinhua) -- A family of five said they were forced to leave a JetBlue Airlines plane without any explanation last month, after their toddler kicked a passenger's seat in front of them, reports said Wednesday.
On June 21, Tamir Raanan and Mandy Ifrah were seated on a JetBlue flight from Fort Lauderdale, a city on Florida's southeastern coast, back to their home New York City, with their one-year-old daughter and two other children, five and eight.
Prior to departure, the toddler, who was sitting on Ifrah's lap, began to kick the seat in front of them, David Templer, an attorney of the family as quoted by a Washington Post report as saying.
Templer said Ifrah apologized to the passenger and then tried to focus on her toddler. He said the other passenger used a derogatory slur and said: "Why don't you tie you baby's feet down?"
Templer said although his client found it offensive, she did nothing other than trying to calm her child down.
Everything calmed down until it was announced the plane would return to the gate and a JetBlue supervisor told them to gather their things, Templer said.
In the first of the two videos posted on YouTube, the couple still seated on the plane repeatedly questioned a JetBlue official about the reason for their removal. He did not give them an answer instead continued to insist the family follow him off the aircraft.
Once they exited the aircraft, the second video showed the family again asking the JetBlue official for more details and why they would not be allowed to board again.
"We were left stranded," an NBC report quoted Ifrah as saying. "We were thousands of miles away from home. I asked them if they could at least get our luggage off the flight."
In a statement released by JetBlue on Wednesday, the airlines said removing the family was because of "a verbal altercation that included physical threats and profanities against a nearby customer."
Templer argues that if Ifrah issued "physical threats" then JetBlue would have notified authorities immediately. "It is imbecilic to believe that the incident occurred the way JetBlue wants to suggest."
The incident added JetBlue to the list of recent encounters on airlines that has gone viral, including forcing a family of four off a Delta Airlines plane while they refused to give up their 2-year-old son's seat in May, and the forceful removal of a 69-year-old passenger from a United Airlines flight plane to make room for crew members in April.
