While no one wants to be sitting next to someone coughing, hacking or otherwise distributing the insides of their bodies outward, one woman claims she was booted from a recent Delta flight simply because another passenger said she looked ill. More specifically, that she appeared “tired and drowsy.”

The 72-year-old woman says she’s pale and soft-spoken, and has a neurological disorder, but that didn’t mean she was ill on a flight from Akron, Ohio to Orlando recently. She wasn’t sick then, she says, and isn’t now.

She had a flight change in Detroit, reports FirstCoastNews.com, when the passenger next to her apparently told flight crew that she was looking tired and drowsy.

“Then she came back and said they’ve moved us because I might be contagious,” the woman said. “Contagious with what?”

Shortly after, she says she was asked to leave the airplane, and that if she didn’t cooperate, the police would be called to escort her off.

“I was begging them not to throw me off the plane,” she said, “I started crying and crying.”

“(They were) acting like I had leprosy,” she added. “It was awful I have never been treated like that in my life.”

So she left the plane, with a $20 voucher she says Delta gave her for tea and soup, and sat in the airport for another hour and a half waiting for the next flight to Orlando.

Delta says it hadn’t heard about the incident, until now. According to a spokesman:

“We are currently investigating the matter. Our agents and crew take very serious the charge of ensuring passenger and employee safety and security. We regret the disruption that incurs from removing any passenger and our goal is to work to re-accommodate them as quickly as possible.”

Elderly woman kicked off Delta flight for looking ill [FirstCoastNews.com]

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.