Family Kicked Off Plane for Unruly Two-Year-Old Speaks Out
Last month, two-year-old Natalie was getting ready to take off on a JetBlue flight with her parents and her sister from Turks and Caicos to Boston. As two-year-olds are wont to do, little Natalie started to throw a fit. After about five minutes of some pretty intense screaming, Dr. Colette Vieau and her husband, Dr. Mordecai Stolk, were able to get their toddler under control and strapped into her seat.
But the pilot of the plane had already heard enough, and made the decision to return to the gate and eject the family from the flight for violating FAA regulations.
To make matters worse for the family, that was the last flight of the day. The incident has touched off a debate about how airlines should deal with unruly kids, and Vieau, Stolk and their two children appeared on ‘Today’ Monday to tell their side of the story.
As Vieau told Matt Lauer,
We weren’t belligerent, drunk, angry, screaming … we’re having a hard time struggling with our children. A little bit of humanity in the situation was really all I was looking for and apparently that doesn’t exist.’’
However, as Lauer informed Vieau, 71% of the 60,000 people who took ‘Today”s on-line poll about the incident sided with the pilot’s decision to remove them.
What do you think? And did the family help their case by appearing on ‘Today?’ While their two daughters are certainly quite adorable, their inability to sit through the interview suggests you wouldn’t necessarily want to be anywhere near them on a long flight.