On Monday, an American Eagle flight which was in the process of taxiing at the Raleigh-Durham Airport in North Carolina turned around to kick 2-and-a-half-year-old Jarett Farell (pictured left) and his mother Janice off of the plane. According to WTVD, the unhappy toddler was crying loudly and after a few warnings, the decision to turn the plane around was made. Janice Farell contends that the crew was very short-tempered and unsympathetic toward her and her son and that everything would have been ok if it weren’t for the flight attendant who kept upsetting Jarett. American Airlines claims they did nothing wrong. Details, inside…
The article says,
As the American Eagle flight headed down the taxiway, two-and-a-half-year-old Jarett Farrell wasn’t a happy traveler.
His mother says she was doing all she could to calm the autistic boy, but got no sympathy from the flight crew.
“If they just would have been a little more understanding I think that none of this would have been a problem,” Mother, Janice Farrell said.
But it became a big problem for everyone on the plane. Farrell says that’s because the flight attendant was indignant.
“She kept coming over and tugging his seatbelt to make it tighter, ‘This has to stay tight’. And then he was wiggling around and trying to get out of his seatbelt. And she kept coming over and reprimanding him and yelling at him,” Farrell said.
One of the pilots came back to the cabin with a stern warning and Farrell says the frustration level escalated.
She says Jarrett picked up on that and things only got worse.
“He just melted down. He saw me getting upset. He was upset. He was on the floor rolling around,” she said.
The pilot returned to the cockpit, turned the plane around and headed back to the terminal.
“The pilot made an announcement that there was a woman and her child on the plane and the child is uncontrollable. And at that point I just broke down,” Farrell said.
Farrell says when she got back to her home in Cary she called her husband and they decided that she should call American Airlines corporate. She says a company representative apologized and said the incident should never have happened.
But that’s not what American Airlines told Eyewitness News.
A spokesman in Dallas says Jarret was pitching a “raging fit”.
And that Janice, who was in a front-row seat, refused to allow her bag to be placed in an overhead compartment, even though there was no under seat stowage.
He says that with a “passenger not complying with FAA regulations, this was the right decision.”
Farrell says even though her travel bag had things to calm Jarrett, she did indeed give it to the flight attendant.
“She took my bag and put it up top,” Farrell said.
Farrell is taking the train to see family in New Jersey and she and her husband say they will never fly American again.
Without having been on the flight, it’s difficult to say who, if anyone, was at fault. If a child is literally out of control, we can understand why this would necessitate the child’s removal from the flight, especially since it was still on the ground. If indeed it was necessary, we just wish it could have happened in a way that didn’t leave Jarett and his mother so upset.
Autistic toddler kicked off airplane [WTVD] (Thanks to everyone who sent this in!)
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@anonymousryan: I agree! Air marshals should have tranquilizer guns handy at all times for just such occasions.
@teapartys_over: Spare us the “DVDs ARE EVIL” rant. Most kids will calm and settle while watching a video, even really hyper ones. Have you ever visited a children’s hospital, pediatric dentist or other place where scary things are done to kids? TVs are EVERYWHERE. It’s because they WORK. They’re over the dentist’s chair, they’re in the room with the ultrasound machine. When my son had a brain MRI, they gave him VR goggles, headphones and his choice of movies. He chose “Godzilla.” Yeah, yeah, it’s fascist corporate Hollywood mind-erasing crap, but it kept him still in the MRI machine while they checked for brain bleeds.
Sedatives create a paradoxical response in some kids — they make them nuts instead (sorta like how Ritalin calms ADD people even though it’s really speed). The DVD player was probably the best tool in this mom’s behavior modification toolbox, but of course she had to turn it off before takeoff.
You have to keep pushing the envelope if you expect your child to learn and grow. You can’t know what they’re capable of, or what’s going to send them around the bend, until you try it. My son handled the opera at age 7 with great aplomb, but the circus? Forget it.
Please remember that plenty of people forgave you YOUR sins when you were little.
This is awesome. Good for that airline! I’m sorry, but I don’t give a crap if your kid is autistic. If he can’t keep quiet, he doesn’t need to be on the plane. Sorry. I know, it sucks that you and your kid got delt a bad hand with the autism, and I’m sympathetic, really I am, but that does not give you the right to make life miserable for all of the rest of us. It just doesn’t! You parents should not be taking your young children on flights! Sorry, but that’s it. Fucking deal with it.
When my kids were little I didn’t take them on planes, I didn’t take them to movies, or out to fancy restaurants, etc, etc. Have some common fucking sense and good manners, people.
To all of the parents of ‘special needs children’ who have made comments regarding the supposed assholery of those who would not wish to be confined aboard an aircraft for several hours with a child in serious meltdown mode:
You complain that others are not properly sensitive to your (and your child’s) special needs and rights. All I can say in reply is, where exactly do you stand in regard to the equally valid needs and rights of those around you? You get what you give, and judging by the tone of many of your comments, it seems pretty apparent that the needs and rights of all others should give way to those of your child. News flash: you are not likely to encounter very cooperative attitudes from others when employing that attitude. Nuff said.
@jimconsumer: Some of us aren’t content to sit at home for our kids’ entire childhoods.
No, I don’t think very tiny children belong at movies (other than kids’ movies) or expensive restaurants. But planes? They’re a way to get to Point A from Point B. My husband’s family is almost entirely in England … how the hell else are we supposed to get there to see them? Boat? Or are we just supposed to go years without seeing our family? (They couldn’t come to us, as they have a baby, too, and we wouldn’t want to subject anyone to THAT!)
Incidentally, this isn’t a hypothetical — we DID go to England last month with our. And he was perfect, both on the way there and the way back. We received numerous compliments on how well-behaved he was.
I am a veteran 20 year flight attendant. Airlines must accept all individuals with disabilities under the (ADA)Americans with Disabilities Act. It does not matter what the disability is, including Turrets Syndrom.You do not drug disabled people! Flight attendants were once trained to have compassion and be caring. Obviously these missed the class.Fire them today, they did not do thier job. The pilot, had no right to tell the passengers anything, ” We are returning to the gate”,period.He needs 8 weeks of sensitivity training. I hope the family sues and they will win, it is the law. My pilot husband of 25 years agrees.
I don’t have kids but I know kids cry and if I’m on a plane with a kid who is crying I just ignore it. To the people on the plane who complain about such a thing: Stop crying.
Nice try both of you, but it still doesn’t really answer my question.
Bill Mahr (take him or leave him) in one of his bits:
“The FAA ruled today that parents can now bring baby bottles on commercial jets again due to a report that said 100% of all airline passengers would rather have their airplane blown up by Islamic terrorists and their burning bodies go crashing down to earth than sit on an airplane with a screaming child for 4 hours.”
@CrazyNyceDave: LOL! You can bet damn sure that many of these parents are among the first to demand that their own comfort zones be respected when they travel, and would be among the first to throw a monumental hissy fit if they felt that weren’t the case. Being a parent endows a certain percentage of the population with a powerful sense of entitlement, I’ve generally found.
I am going to have to side with the airlines with this. I have a few autistic friends and this stuff does happen. There can’t be the danger of a child throwing a tantrum. The mother should have talked to the doctor and taken every precaution in case something like this happened.
He’s 2 1/2…where was the kid’s car seat? Last I checked, 3 years old was the age to move a kid to a belt positioning booster, so why wasn’t he strapped in to his 5 point harness car seat? Mom didn’t want to lug it to the gate? Tough cookies, there are plenty of gadgets to help you roll the thing through security and down the terminal.
Additionally, I suspect the car seat would have provided a sense of security to the child and made it less likely that American Eagle staff would have had to intervene. As in, he wouldn’t have been throwing a tantrum that caused safety issues for himself and others.
I have read most of the comments on here and have to say DID ALIENS SURGICALLY REMOVE YOUR HUMANITY!? Side with the airlines? For harassing the kid and mom, then giving them both the boot in the behind?
What they should have done is asked NICELY for the mother to calm the child down by the time the plane reaches the runway (holding short position in pilot talk) and if he is still presenting a safety risk, then have a moveable stairway brought to the door, gently and nicely escort the mother and child down to an airport bus or other ground vehicle to be taken back to the terminal. All told, it’s maybe a 2 minute delay for the rest of the passengers and airport.
It sounds like they had to make a complete about face, and run the engines all the way back to the gate. Planes don’t move with motors in their wheels, they have to inefficiently burn fuel to move the plane along the ground, then either top off what was needlessly lost, or fly with less fuel which isn’t good.
Continuing with the mother and child, AA could have then helped them book a later flight hoping the child will be calmer, or arrange for alternate transportation altogether (Amtrak FTW!!!).
Taking this another way, if the child was no longer posing a safety hazard once the plane was holding short, but still pitching a fit, then the passengers can deal with it. They already deal with smaller-then-Mercury-space-capsule-sized-seats douchebags strip-searching them at the ‘Gate, a screaming kid is not that big of an annoyance. Not to mention the short-distance of this particular flight.
If I’m stuck on the plane with a screaming baby, I couldn’t care less about why the baby is crying. Get the baby off the plane. Especially if the plane’s still on the ground, but even if it’s not.
@Zatnikitelman: My humanity consists in being human enough not to want to be trapped in a confined space with an hysterical child for an hour+, and also being human enough not to be such a hypocrite that I can’t admit to that. No matter how holier-than-thou you want to get about it, the fact remains that the child was a SAFETY HAZARD to himself and everyone else on that plane, and needed not to be on board. I don’t care how ‘special’ he is, his ‘specialness’ does not confer a right to pose a hazard to others.
@23221: Since when did I ever confer that he should continue to pose a hazard to anyone? If you actually read my post instead of looking at the first sentence or so, then you’d realize that the proper solution would have been to gently escort them off the plane AT the end of the Taxi. If the mom had gotten the kid quiet by then, all the better everyone leaves on time, if not, then they get off the plane there, and are taken back to the terminal where they can rebook, or go find a train station or something.
There’s no heck like a 12 hour international flight with not one but two crying children keeping everyone awake.
I’m sorry, but I would rather get off the plane and miss my flight than have to put up with a misbehaving kid on an airplane.
I am a flight attendant for another carrier, and always find it interesting to hear passengers’ viewpoints on the everyday operations of an airline. Of course, I certainly cannot speak for what another carrier’s policies and procedures are, but disruptive children always present the potential for there to be an explosive misunderstanding between crew and parent; particularly for a child with special needs.
As a crew member, you always feel that you are stuck between angry passengers who want you to “do something about that kid!!!” and the parent who desperately wants nothing more than their child to settle down themselves. If a child (or anybody else) refuses to stay in their seat, it is against FAA regulations to continue moving on an active taxiway (e.g. as soon as the front entry door is closed until it is opened again). The fine for the airline is $5000 AND the fine for the negligent flight attendant is $5000… PER INCIDENT (if the agent is just a real you-know-what).
In this day and time when the Feds are particularly hard on the airlines, we frequently have agents who travel for leisure or are required to tell us ahead of time they will be monitoring our flight.
And just as a note, if there is no seat in front of you (i.e. in front of the bulk head esp. the very first row) ALL of your things, purses included, MUST be placed over head. Any loose items left on the floor by your feet is a $500 fine per item found unsecured to your crew member. I know different rules apply to different carriers, dictated by the verbiage in their contract with the FAA to operate commercial flights; this is what is charged to the carrier for which I work.
We’re not being witches, we just can’t afford to pay fines for not doing our jobs! And we never know who’s watching…