Southwest Airlines Says Family Is Too Unruly To Fly
Wendy Slaughter, her four children and her sister are too unruly for Southwest Airlines! The airline says that the children were so out of control that the airline decided to deny boarding for their connecting flight from Phoenix to Seattle — stranding them in Phoenix for the night while they tried to arrange other travel plans.
When Ms. Slaughter's flight from Detroit to Phoenix landed, she was met by police who escorted her and her family from the plane. Police detained the family, and explained that they were simply too unruly to board their connecting flight to Seattle.
Ms. Slaughter admits her kids were out of control on the plane, getting up and wandering around, but says that two of them have disabilities (one is autistic and another has cerebral palsy) and that "they are kids."
“The children were out of control on the flight you know, they were restless, excited and worked up and they are kids,” Slaughter told KIRO tv. "I am furious about it. I can’t believe they could do something like that and then leave us completely stranded with no money no way to get anywhere."
According to Slaughter, sympathetic police officers donated money for a hotel for the night and some food. The family is asking for compensation and a public apology.
Southwest Airlines is standing by their decision, claiming that the family was being threatening:
"They were being disruptive and unruly on the plane, and for the safety of our customers and the flight crew, we decided to not allow them to travel on to Seattle at that time. Typically if it's a threatening behavior, it's not safe to travel 30,000 feet in the air in a contained environment."
Family Says Airline Left Them Stranded At Airport [KIRO](Thanks, James!)
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Comments:
Given the story, especially since she admits the kids were being disruptive, I'm 100% behind Southwest here.
Actions like this would make me more apt to fly Southwest in the future. Good job!
They are retarded because their parents made fun of handicapped kids in High School. This is God's punishment.
/South Park
//Paraphrased.
I definitely side with Southwest here, especially as wildcatlh said, she admits they were disruptive as well. The less annoying people on flights the better. One of the worst things is to be on a plane with kids running up and down the aisles uncontrollably and their parents not even caring one bit.
@privatejoker75: Darling, neither autism or cerebral palsy have any effect on intelligence. These kids are not "retarded."
@wiIdcatlh: WHOA WHOA WHOA! It sounds an awful lot like you are blaming the victim!
/sarcasm off
Southwest is among the best airlines when it comes to customer service for people NOT wearing skimpy outfits. If SOUTHWEST kicked off the family, they HAD to be asking for it.
I would be willing to pay extra for a flight with no children...
In this case, southwest did the right thing. The kids were too disruptive and the mother was incapable or unwilling to control the kids.
Sorry, but autism is not an valid excuse to inconvenience the attendants and other passengers on the plane. Yes, it is a safety issue when anyone is running around and does not follow directions.
I think that the airline was proper in denying them further travel. Parents need to take ownership of their children's actions. If a parent, such as this woman, cannot control her children then she has no business flying them for hours at a time in a confined space.
A plane is NOT a playground. Perhaps she should have opted for AmTrak.
I had a similar experience but I'm not sure it was with Southwest. While waiting to board the plane, I saw a girl yelling at her mom and hitting her. Clearly this girl had some condition and everyone in line were cringing at the thought of being a plane for hours with this girl. Because of her handicap she boarded first. After a while when I started to board but not inside the plane yet, the stewardess directed all of us to stand to the right and look away as they lead this girl and her family off the plane. The mother could not keep her daughter from yelling and the stewardess further instructed that the girl might spit on us if we made eye contact.
It is a classic case of a company doing the right thing poorly.
There was no reasonable alternative to preventing a family who was, by the mother's admission "out of control". However, it would not have put the company out at all to put them up in a hotel for 1 or even 2 nights.
An apology from Southwest, however, seems inappropriate.
This is a bad situation all around. Stranding a family (hell, stranding anyone) like that is a bad move. However, subjecting not just the other passengers but the flight attendants to unruly kids is just as bad.
Probably the only "right" thing to have done is to get the family home and then ban them from ever flying the airline again, after explaining why.
I'm all for this! On a recent flight, the kid in the seat in front of me insisted on climbing on the back of the seat. By "the back of the seat" I mean that he was balanced on the top of the seat back. He stayed there during takeoff and much of the flight. I complained, but there were language barriers.
Even if the parents didn't care about the safety of the kid, I cared - about my own safety. An 80-pound child makes a great projectile on a moving plane.
Plenty of kids (yes, even autistic ones) manage to fly without putting other people in danger. It sounds like the mother is hiding behind her kids' disabilities.
@mizmoose:
reatarded: relatively slow in mental or emotional or physical development; "providing a secure and sometimes happy life for the retarded"
in other news, the mother should have just threw a pile of toothpicks on the ground to keep the autistic kid busy
No coverage on how the kids were all wearing micro miniskirts, too? Stupid mainstream media!
CONTROL YOUR DAMN KIDS.
Bad parents have lots of excuses but in the end they are just bad parents.
Though I don't fly much, when I do I like to use Southwest. This only strengthens my resolve to do so in the future.
/ I would have asked her to leave mid-flight
It doesn't matter if your children have a disability. If they can't be kept under control for the flight then they shouldn't be on the plane - both for their own safety and the safety of others.
Southwest was totally right on this one. I hate it when there are screaming brats on a flight. Its worse when they are handicapped and cannot be controlled. This lady deserves nothing!!
Kudos to Southwest
Honestly there is no excuse for bad parenting. It is all about planning. Make sure the kids have plenty of activities to do in their seats. I always make sure my daughter has her ipod and nintendo DS for any travel. In turn I have received compliments on her behavior but its just being a parent.
I'll consider Southwest first for my next flight because of this.
Shock collars could have solved this problem.
Can't fault them in the least. "They're just kids" sounds a lot like "It's not my fault they're uncontrolable".
i just purchased two southwest roundtrip tickets because of this story
When I read the headline for this post I was fearing that everyone would be outraged. I am glad toread the comments here - totally agree with many.
Flight attendants are typically considerate of families and understand that kids may not be able to sit still throughout an entire flight. Especially if there is a "special need," I have typically witnessed them being very understanding. There seems to have been a serious issue here ,and I doubt that they just denied them to travel for no good reason.
It has to be possible for an airline to ensure the safety of their flights in these situations.
I wonder if Southwest refunded their tickets. It says that Southwest left them stranded without any money, but in this kind of situation I believe that they would be entitled to a refund for denied boarding.
I totally agree with Southwest though. The combination of four kids, two of whom have disabilities, and a five-months pregnant woman is a recipe for disaster.
looks like the airline wasnt equiped to deal with the disabilities of the children. isnt there some law about not providing service based on disability.
This is very sad that this can be done without providing alternate travel plans for them. I'm sure most everyone on their connecting flight would have been happy to not them on their flight, but was the small amount of gain received (people didn't have to deal with them) worth the huge inconvenience that this family had to deal with (being kicked off a plane and stranded)? I don't think it was.
I don't have autistic children but I do have one small child, I can't imagine the workers of this airline not having compassion for this family when I know how hard it is to control one regular child let alone two with problems.
I'm very glad to hear that at least the police who were forced to do the dirty work of this airline had enough compassion to help put this family in a hotel with some food for a night.
"Kids being kids" is no excuse for risking safety of the children and the passengers. 1 turbulent drop can lead to injury, that's why everyone must be seated and belted.
Southwest Airlines is still one of the best.
Having children does not mean that you have a "get out of jail free" card when it comes to travel plans that could subject 50+ people to misery and compromised safety. This type of behavior would not be accepted by an adult who was differently-abled, whether their travel companion tried to resolve the situation or not. So, sorry mom, but if you can't control your kids, you sure as hell had better not get on a flight with me, because I will say something to you about it, even if the airline doesn't.
@privatejoker75: Isn't this the kind of juvenile crap the new comments policy is supposed to handle?
Cerebral palsy is a motor disorder, not a behavioral one. If your kid has CP and cannot behave, blame your parenting disorder, not the CP.
As for autism, if your kid is beyond your control, don't fly with them. Again, see parenting disorder.
I have a daughter with CP. We've flown before, and there has been no misbehavior. Parents like this give special needs kids a bad name (see the multiple previous comments, though the commenters should really know better). If your expectations of your kids are so low as to allow this junk in the name of their special needs, god help them as adults. High expectations, whether it be for "regular" kids or special needs ones, are the key to success.
Yes, the airline did the TOTALLY correct thing here and made a lesson out of her. REFUSE to control and discipline your kids, and don't expect to fly. Period, the end. I hope they really gave her the slap-down in front of her kids, called her an unfit mother, etc.
Further, I think airlines should call Child Protective Services - and refusing to control kids / disruption on airplanes should be grounds for losing the kids for a while until she PROVES she can control them. People need to learn the hard way to control their kids. NO it is not okay to have them run around screaming and punching seats or other people on an airplane. Duh. Sounds like a welfare queen to me. I can only imagine the brat-monsters these kids will become at school.
I know a few weeks ago, I was in a fine Chinese restaurant, and the two supposed adults at the next table were doing NOTHING about their 3 screaming 2- 3- and 5- year olds throwing food, screaming and literally jumping up and down on top of the table. Of course, the moron waiters and managers at the restaurant let that go on way too long, and every one else's meal in that room was ruined. Of course I didn't want to criticize them and have the trailer trash dad start a fist-fight. I was however tempted to call the police and I WILL next time.
I have NO sympathy for NON-parents who think their kids are pets / appliances / biological entertainment. You spit it out, you manage it and shut it up in public, period.
Separately, how about a whole separate boarding process at security - an "unfit parent / unruly kid check" of some type...psychologists can design an appropriate test and series of observations, and if they don't pass, they don't get to the gate. Or the kid has to wear a muzzle and be in a carrier. Works for me...
@privatejoker75: "Its no one else's fault that you have two retarded kids"... what a great way to test the new comments code at Consumerist!
As a parent of a 'retarded' kid, you just made me ten times more grateful that he landed in my house, not yours.
@Womblebug: what is juvenile about the word "retarded"? Just because its no longer pc? Do you even know what the term retarded means? Its not just mentally retarded (such as yourself), it also can mean emotionally (autism) or physically
"They are kids." No control over your kids? Revoke the parenting license.
Oh, wait, we can't operate vehicles without verified training (so we don't cause others harm), but we can breed again and again without an ounce of education related to raising children. This causes significant harm to not only those children, but to society as a whole. And potentially their children's children. And so on.
We have an exponentially growing number of incapable people creating incapable kids. This directly relates to some lady assuming we should put up with her (unfortunately) handicapped, wild offspring's shit. And she is "furious" that we won't. Wow.
No, we probably don't know the whole story, but I certainly agree with Southwest at this point.
Oh...and if you're not a dumbass, please have three or four kids to offset the number of idiots who will be voting in the coming generations. I don't want to be dominated by stupid people just because there's a shit ton of them.
Air travel is horrible enough without unruly parents failing to take control of their screaming, mentally-challenged children. This is the second story like this in two weeks.
@lightaugust: i guess you're also going to teach your kids to sit criss-cross applesauce as opposed to indian style?
@fostina1: There's laws saying that an airline must take reasonable steps to accommodate the disabled (although I think it is directed primarily at physical disabilities), but what sort of reasonable steps would you suggest the airline take to accommodate a disability that render a child uncontrollable? They can't tie them down, and they can't drug them up. What other options are there?
@Womblebug: I thought cerebral palsy was solely a physical disorder to, but according to Wikipedia, a secondary symptom can be behavioral disorders.
Secondary conditions can include seizures, epilepsy, speech or communication disorders, eating problems, sensory impairments, mental retardation, learning disabilities, and/or behavioral disorders.
@Gokuhouse: I'm really not seeing the sadness in this story at all. Had there been an adult who was misbehaved, disruptive, and in the way of flight attendants all the time, wouldn't people on the plane be worried and/or afraid of the adult? I don't see how Southwest, in a move to please 95% of the people on the flight, have performed a grave injustice. Rather, they have made their customers happy and perhaps attracted more business since people now know that they won't put up with individuals who cannot be controlled. Although, yes, they should have arranged for the mom and kids to catch the next flight, the mom could have prevented all of this by having another adult fly with her to care for the children or taken an alternate means of transit where children could get breaks to go out and run around.
I have to side with the airline when even the mom admits her kids were out of control and she attempts to rationalize it by claiming "kids will be kids."
good. i wish more people with annoying kids would be removed. Its no one else's fault that you have two retarded kids