Removed from flight.

[Madhatter24]

This is quite a long thread but I want you to get all the information as I am really confused and want to give my friend the best advice.

A friend of mine who was returning from holiday, she was travelling with her brother, his wife, their two young children and my elderly mother in law who is age 70+. They were seated separately on the plane, my friend was seated upstairs and everyone else was seated downstairs together. The niece was crying for my friend and she was becoming agitated as she is very attached to her and she is always with her, however as she was seated upstairs she couldn't sit with her. My friend asked the stewardess it was it possible for her to sit near her family and they said once everyone is boarded, if there's a way they can swap her with another passenger they will. She accepted this and was waiting patiently for the flight to board and take off. Another passenger on the plane complained to the steward and said that my friends niece is ill and should be checked over by a doctor before being allowed to fly (she was crying quite loudly and my friends sis in law was trying desperately to calm her).

The stewardess then goes over to the sister in law and asks if the child is ill. The sister-in-law explained that she's not ill and she is crying for her auntie and who is seated upstairs.

Another stewardess then goes upstairs and said that My friend need to go downstairs (she didn't say why and my friend thought it was because they found a seat for her near her family).
In the meantime My friend was not aware of this but the stewardess that was in charge was asking her family to get off the flight and get the child checked by a doctor within the airport. The sister-in-law and brother were saying that the child is not ill and that she is crying because she wants to be seated with her auntie. However they were refusing to listen and said that they must all get off the flight and get the child checked by the doctor within the airport. They were absolutely refusing to listen. They were trying to explain to them that they are travelling with an elderly person and to young children.

As they kept on trying to explain the situation to the stewardess and explain that the child is not ill and she is only upset because she wants to be seated with her auntie, they started getting increasingly rude and saying get out of this plane now. Eventually they had no option but to leave the flight. They went to the medical room and the doctor checked the child and said that there is absolutely no reason why the child cannot fly. They then went back to the check-in desk And they said that as they have missed their flight and that they need to pay a penalty of £200 each. Again they tried to explain the situation to the check in staff and said that they were removed from the flight due to no fault of their own and it was only because a another passenger complained that the small child was ill when she wasn't she was only crying because she wanted to be sat next to her auntie. However once again they were not being reasonable and would not listen to our side. They eventually had to pay £100 per person as a penalty for missing the flight.

When they arrived back at Heathrow, a few pieces of luggage arrived however the reminder of the luggage arrived in dribs and drabs over the next few days delivered to the home address.

My friend has been completely and utterly broken by this whole experience. It has caused her to become ill and she is unable to work because the of the stress this whole situation caused. What would you do in this situation? I was thinking of tagging the airline (emirates) on a Facebook page, however thinking a bit deeper was thinking maybe write to them and see what their response is.

She saying it's not just about the financial loss that they incurred, it's about the stress and ordeal they had to go through with two young children and elderly mother-in-law. All because another person just said that the child was ill. This has completely ruined her holiday and she has just become a recluse and feels like a complete failure for not having managed the situation better at the time. I'm sorry this is such a long post but I just want to get all the details in.

WWYD.

Im not buying the "child has only recently been diagnosed" line. You know your own child. Even before a diagnosis you know what will cause a melt down.

True redexpat ... unless the child were mostly raised by “auntie”.

We have already heard the mother is wealthy. If this nonsense is true, it sounds like rich expat with nanny drama, as Matt Frei’s Dimples says.

Good luck getting compensation from Emirates (EK) I am a very regular traveller with them and have had some issues, and not even received a single Skywards mile as compensation.

EK fly 2 versions of the 380, one with all economy downstairs, upstairs at the front are the showers then 1st class suites, then behind business class in 2 sections then the bar with the stairs down to the crew rest area and economy.

But on some 380's the 1st class suites are not there, and the area is taken up with much better economy seats in rows of 2 at the front which are quieter then business behind. EK, until 2020 (I think) do not have premium economy

Maybe as these seats cost more and are better than the ones downstairs to request they all wanted them.

Who knows just let it go and pay for seat selection next time.

There are many ways this could have been avoided. Firstly by the family pre planning and booking seats together. One of the adults in the family could have tried swapping with the aunt. I don't understand why everyone including the aunt who was seated away was asked to disembark for one child. Surely that only takes one adult? Or there is more to the story that we aren't being told.

Not sure how any of this leaves your friend so distraught she's unable to work. Something to chalk up to experience and move on.

If this is what truly happened then I think you need to get your £100 per person back from them. Yes it must have been very distressing at the time but I don't see why it would cause such a big impact after that it break her.

The lesson being that you should prebook seats so that you are all sat together. I normally check to see how many seats are left before the free check in window opens and if I think there is a risk that we won't be sat together as seats are getting prebooked then I pay up and book. But very rarely have I had to do this.
I thought Emirates let you prebook seats when you buy the tickets if you have children in your booking, that was the case for us last time we flew with them but that was 2 years ago.

It all could have been handled better but they probably didn't want to risk the flight being delayed as Dubai Airport is so busy and Emirates has flight connections all over the world.

I don't think the airline was particularly unreasonable and I agree your friend might benefit from some professional help to work out why this has affected her so deeply. neurodivergent conditions including autism can run in families and her breakdown in response to this unexpected stress might indicate that she also has additional needs that have never been detected.

no point harping on about what they should have done differently. just plan carefully if there is a next time. this might include only ever booking flights if seating all together can be guaranteed. it might also be worth travelling with a "to whom it may concern" letter from the child's doctors laying out the facts of the child's condition and the reasonable adjustments to normal practice that are most likely to help.

Reasonable adjustments don’t include a child refusing to fasten their seatbelt (which I suspect is the buried lede here). Ever. No seatbelt, no fly. Your constsnt’s letter and three quid will get you a coffee in the lounge after you have been offloaded.

People thought it was you because you used "my" and "we" accidentally.

I think that a "normal" person would feel annoyed at paying extra money and being delayed if they had to be back at a certain time (eg supermarket delivery was coming) . I'd also understand if they kicked themselves for not booking early enough/pay extra to be sat together. There would be an embarrassment factor of being thrown off the plane perhaps.

Being broken is extreme. What would make her feel better? She's wealthy so not her money back. We don't know how upset her dd was but Emirates aren't unreasonable for throwing at least the child and parent off the plane if the child is so upset she vomited or wouldn't wear a seatbelt. Emirates can't apologise if the child made it unsafe to take off.

Is her broken feelings more about the child's diagnosis and what this is likely to mean in future?

OP maybe this child and mother aren't ready to fly and should wait a couple of years. The aunt needs some help to learn coping strategies for stressful situations.

I can see you feel very hard done by, OP, but I think that what posters are struggling to understand is why the aunt is so massively over-invested in all this to the extent that she is now off work and has become a recluse.

Surely you can see that that is not the reaction of someone who is mentally healthy, given the incident you describe?

Itchy chin

I’m loving the fact that posting on the gets parenting site is confidential.

Uk’s.

Bloody hell autocorrect.

Airlines don't go around randomly kicking families off planes. It needs full agreement and sign off by the captain who then orders that all their bags their are offloaded. It's massively disruptive and very expensive and not done on a whim.
You must have been designated either a danger or a health risk.
And why didn't the 'auntie' swap seats with another family member or ask another passenger if they'd prefer to swap with 'auntie' for a chance of getting away from the demon child? I'd have bitten your hand off for an upstairs economy seat

OP, what are you hoping to gain from this thread? Some advice on how to deal with the airline, or advice on how to deal with your friend? Do you think her reaction is normal?

The whole seat moving / missing aunt situation is a straw man. What you have here is a child with autism (possibly 2), and travelling by plane is an incredibly stressful situation which is going to need to be managed far more strategically in future. The family will need to pay whatever supplement is required to sit together, they will need to communicate the child's disability to the airline, and they will need to work with the airline to manage the whole process a lot more smoothly.

However, given that it was Emirates, I wonder if there was a high proportion of Middle Eastern passengers. Having taught in that region it can be harder to have autism recognised as an illness rather than 'naughtiness'. Might explain why other passengers were quick to label an autistic child as sick and get her removed from the flight.

Absolutely none of it makes sense.

Was the aunt upstairs in business or economy? Either way I can’t see why any passengers who were seated around this debacle wouldn’t have WANTED to swap with the aunt? It would have meant they either scored a business seat or a seat away from what was probably going to be problematic kids for the rest of the flight.

Why did the aunt join in with this circus? If she was not going to swap with someone why was she now downstairs when it would seem the flight is being prepared for take off?

Why did they ALL get off. Surely one parent and the child with the issue or at most both parents and the child while everyone else (grandparent sitting next to other child and aunt upstairs) would have just continued on as planned. Why would the airline refund everyone when surely it was a choice that most of the people got off?

I just dont buy the illness aspect. Some random on the plane suggests the child is ill. On this basis the captain orders the child off AND every single member of the family including those sitting upstairs? It takes a lot to be ordered off, it results in kerfuffle and potential delays while bags are located and unloaded etc. it’s not done for shits and giggles and I doubt it was done as some random passenger suggested the child was ill. Would the child not allow the seatbelt to be done up? Did the family members all become argumentative and/or abusive?

As for the whole distressed, unable to function, work or leave the house. What a load of crap. If this is the case then they need serious assistance as it’s got nothing to do with what occurred on the plane, there is obviously something else wrong. I don’t even understand if it is the rich mother or aunt who is affected. Irrespective the airline is not responsible for their mental health issues. Travelling rarely goes to plan, it’s generally frustrating and manages to piss everyone off in some way. But that’s all it is, go home have a 5min rant about your crappy trip and move on. To be overwrought, unable to work or leave the house ..... fuck me.

The whole story is weird and I think the airlines version may make more sense.

The OP seems to suggest the luggage was sent on to the family after the flight, not offloaded from it?

The OP seems to suggest the luggage was sent on to the family after the flight, not offloaded from it?

I thought it had long been law that all baggage had to be accompanied by it's owner - unless it was cargo/specialised unaccompanied baggage - that probably goes through a different screening process.

I thought it had long been law that all baggage had to be accompanied by it's owner - unless it was cargo/specialised unaccompanied baggage - that probably goes through a different screening process.

Bags get misloaded all the time. They will have followed on a later flight.

First take your complaint straight to the airline. If you are not satisfied with the outcome, the Civil Aviation Authority has a link here which explains what to do. You can also take it to the Citizen's Advice Bureau, or consumer rights newspaper columns.

Failing that, Mumsnet will tell you what you should have done, and Doctor Who will lend you a time machine to change the past.

We are not getting the whole story, that's for sure. I am waiting for the Metro headline.

It must take ages to find a specific suitcase(s) in the cargo hold of a fully loaded airbus. How is it done? How long does it take?

As you can tell, I'm not an aviation expert.

Your friend needs to get a grip. If everyone was so precious about little things like this causing them to get ill and be off work, the world would come to an end.

Anyway, if the child has such excessive special needs that they have a meltdown if one person in their family is sat away from them, they shouldn't be on a fucking plane. Sorry for stating the obvious.

@AutumnCrow we were really surprised at how fast our bags were offloaded when we missed a flight. Each bag had a barcode and that told the baggage folk where in the hold it was apparently- our bags were on the next flight before we knew we were!

@autumncrow bags go into inventorised metal boxes and loaded by machine. Families bags (assuming all checked in together and on same pnr) can be identified to a single box, pulled out and manually extracted. Takes about 15 minutes. Not the end of the world but enough time to be something you don't do for laugh.