Passengers boo flight crew after woman booted from plane
PORTLAND, Ore. -- A passenger on an American Airlines flight was shocked to hear a flight attendant kick her off the plane.
Another passenger on the Portland-bound flight shared his cell phone video with the world, KATU-TV reports.
That passenger and others are coming to the defense of the woman who they say didn't deserve to get the boot..
Some passengers are filing complaints with American Airlines -- one passenger said he's been on plenty of flights when people maybe should've been tossed off planes, but this was not one of them.
Bill Byrne is back home in Portland - and helped explain what exactly he saw with a little illustration.
"This was U.S. Air/American. She was seated in 20F and I'm right here... behind her," he said.
In the video he recorded, seated behind the woman who didn't make it to PDX.
"I didn't do anything," the woman says on the video.
"The video footage is so bad because I was holding the phone like this. So he couldn't tell I was filming him," Byrne said. Byrne said he was afraid of the flight attendant "because he was ready to throw more people off."
Byrne says according to passengers at the front of the plane, the woman may have had some miscommunication with the flight attendant and possibly didn't hear him tell her to move out of the aisle; she thought that flight attendant was rude. She was telling another airline employee about it, when Byrne says that first flight attendant came back to her seat to kick her off the plane.
"Are you serious? I didn't even know he was talking to me," the booted passenger protests. "This can't be legal. I seriously didn't do anything."
"She starts sobbing. She says, 'I didn't' do anything wrong, I don't think this
is legal,'" Byrne said.
Cue the passenger boos, including the boo from Byrne.
"I've seen people who deserve that but never actually seen somebody thrown off a plane," Byrne said.
A spokesman for American Airlines says the airline is aware of the video, and is investigating what happened.
