Southwest Airlines defended its decision to remove the passenger.
A woman travelling from Colorado to California on a Southwest Airlines flight was allegedly kicked off by cabin crew after she reached down and stroked her puppy. The unverified video of the incident is going on social media platforms.
The video posted by Sara Price on TikTok, now going viral on X, shows a woman sporting a sweatshirt, removing her bags from the plane’s overhead compartment and heading for the exit. The text on the video says, “Southwest Airlines kicks lady off flight for petting her puppy.” According to the Independent, the video has been watched more than 1.4 million times as of publish time.
The caption read, “The puppy was whining a little and the flight attendant boarding everyone walked up to her and said, if your dogs don’t be quiet, you may not be able to fly,” Ms Price wrote in the caption.
This was on our flight with @SouthwestAir yesterday. She was literally petty her new puppy through the mesh of the completely zipped carrier, and they booted her off. pic.twitter.com/HeuMR4jzJ4
— Sara (@_Sara_Price_) October 21, 2023
Upon boarding, the dog owner, who happened to be seated in the same row as Ms Price, placed the carrier on her lap and proceeded to caress her dog. According to Ms Price’s account, a flight attendant then came over to the dog owner and requested that she zip up the carrier and store it beneath the seat.
According to Southwest’s pet policy, “Pets must be secured in the pet carrier at all times while in the gate area, during boarding/deplaning, and for the entire flight. If you don’t follow this requirement, your pet may be denied transportation.”
In a summary provided by Ms Price and shared in the second video, it was observed that the woman believed it was acceptable for her to continue petting the dog until all passengers had finished boarding.
Ms Price went on to explain that the flight attendants opted to return to the gate and remove the dog owner from the plane.
In Ms Price’s video, you can hear the dog owner declining assistance from a flight attendant. She says, “I’m not going to allow you to handle any of my belongings. You are impolite. You are unkind. And I will never choose Southwest for my flights again.”
In the background of the video, other individuals can be heard consoling her. One man is heard saying, “You didn’t even have the dog out – you were just petting it.” In one of her subsequent TikTok videos, Ms Price mentioned that the man was her husband.
According to the New York Post, Southwest Airlines defended its decision to remove the passenger.
“We’re aware of the videos and our initial reports indicate that the customer would not comply with keeping her dog’s kennel closed, which is our policy,” an airline representative told the Post. “Our Employees are trained to ensure customers are following protocol, and in this situation and after the customer repeatedly refused to comply with our crew’s instructions, the decision was made to deplane the disruptive passenger.”
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