A seating rules dispute between a flight attendant and a family with a special needs child caught the attention of CNN anchor Jake Tapper. He took to Twitter to call out United Airlines for its treatment of the family. The mother posted her account on Tumblr, and the story is quickly going viral.
On Dec. 30, the family boarded the United Airlines flight in the Dominican Republic bound for Newark. According to the mother’s account, the dispute centered on her 3-year-old child, who had a stroke and been diagnosed with spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy. The child’s condition makes her unable to sit up independently. The mother wanted to hold the child on her lap for the flight, but one flight attendant was adamant about following airline safety guidelines, which require any child over the age of 2 to be buckled in his or her own seat.
Other flight attendants came to the family’s defense, finding a clause in the rule book allowing passengers who are unable to sit independently to sit on a lap. The captain of the flight suggested the child be buckled in for takeoff and landing and could be in the mother’s lap for the rest of the flight. The dispute caused the plane to take off almost an hour late.
Tapper witnessed the commotion and tweeted his negative opinion of how the airline handled the incident. United Airlines responded back, citing safety regulation mandates, but Tapper dismissed the response as “rather cold.”
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