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I Love My Baby Carrier Too, But Not Enough To Get Kicked Off A Plane
Flying is the worst, first class or not. And flying with small children is its own particular brand of torture. But just because flying is difficult, doesn’t mean you get to do whatever you want on an airplane, especially since no one is making you fly and there are safety concerns at play. In general, I find that when flying with babies, being nice to the flight attendants goes a long way towards getting your kids extra juice and animal crackers. But Nicki Gazlay apparently doesn’t agree with my methods. Mom to a five-month-old, Gazlay was kicked off a plane over her baby carrier.
From wmcactionnews5.com, comes the story of Gazlay, who was recently kicked off of a Frontier Airlines flight with her baby. Gazlay was boarding a connection flight from Denver to Memphsis. Although her baby was in his Ergo carrier for the first flight, as she was boarding this second flight she was asked to remove her child from the carrier by a flight attendant.
According to Gazlay, she questioned the flight attendant as to why she didn’t have to have take the baby out of the carrier on the previous flight with the same airline. Gazlay says she had her child out of the carrier when the attendant asked her again if to follow the rules. That’s when Gazlay said to the attendant:Â “Of course I am going to comply, I’m going to do whatever you say because you are the queen of this airplane.” Gazlay claims she was then removed from the plane and had to purchase another ticket with a different airline.
I raise an eyebrow at anyone who presents a conversation as though it radically jumped from polite questioning to a snarky comment about royal titles without escalation and then moans to the media that she was treated unfairly. My Nancy Drew-like senses appear to be on point, as Todd Lehmacher, the director of Corporate Communications for Frontier Airlines issued a statement, quoted in part below, that tells the story in a different way. From wmcactionews5:
Ms. Gazlay was attempting to use a restraining device not approved by the FAA for use onboard an aircraft.
Our flight attendant politely let Ms. Gazlay know that due to FAA regulations that were in place for their safety, that she wouldn’t be able to use the unapproved device. Upon verbal notification by the flight attendant, Ms. Gazlay immediately became belligerent and argumentative with our crew member (this fact has been corroborated by two customers seated in the vicinity of Ms. Gazlay).
The flight attendant then calmly repeated the FAA regulations concerning the device’s use and Ms. Gazlay continued to argue with the flight attendant which now made others on the plane ‘very uncomfortable’ (this fact has been documented in writing by other customers). Federal Aviation Regulations require customer compliance with crew member instructions in this regard.
We support the actions of our flight crew 100% as they did exactly what they were trained to do in professional manner. Everything we do onboard is done with safety as the primary driver and we simply will not tolerate abusive behavior on board towards crew or other customers. This is the reason she was removed. We love children and families but customer compliance with crew member instructions regarding safety is critically important and mandated by Federal Aviation Regulations. This is for everyone’s safety on board.
It is Ms. Gazlay that owes our crew and the customers that witnessed the event an apology.
