A New York high school senior class and an airline agree on one thing: 101 students and eight chaperones were kicked off an early-morning flight from New York to Atlanta on Monday.
From there, the accounts diverge.
Southwest Airlines said the group of “non-compliant passengers” would not stay seated, and some were using their mobile devices. When the students failed to comply with requests from the flight crew, including the captain, they were asked to leave the plane, delaying the AirTran flight for 45 minutes, said Southwest spokesman Brad Hawkins.
Students and chaperones from Yeshivah of Flatbush, a private, Orthodox Jewish high school in Brooklyn, said the flight crew overreacted to the youths who were looking forward to visiting Six Flags and rafting, among other activities.
“It blew out of proportion. It was a mountain out of a molehill,” said teacher Marian Wielgus, one of the chaperones.
According to Wielgus, some students may have had to be told twice to sit down or turn off their phones, but everyone listened.
“They certainly did not do what the stewardess was claiming they did,” she said. “That’s what was so bizarre.”
Wielgus said the flight attendants were “nasty,” “overreacting” and “created an incident when there didn’t have to be one.”
According to Southwest Airlines, the group violated safety regulations.
Wielgus said she would understand if individual students who were not complying had been asked to leave, but she objected to the collective punishment.
Wielgus said a “small group” of students in the back of the aircraft were chatty, but that did not warrant the flight crew to force an entire group of 109 people off the plane.
“It was so ugly,” she said.
Rabbi Joseph Beyda, another chaperone, said none of the students on the plane was particularly loud or disruptive. And when he saw that the flight attendant was flustered and had asked students to leave, he asked which kids were causing issues and offered to help, but she refused.
“They just simply said ‘get off the plane,'” Beyda said.
Student Jonathan Zehavi said he felt they were targeted because they are an identifiably Jewish group.
“They treated us like we were terrorists; I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m not someone to make these kinds of statements,” Zehavi said. “I think if it was a group of non-religious kids, the air stewardess wouldn’t have dared to kick them off.”
Zehavi said Southwest Airlines is attempting to cover up an unprofessional and rash decision by saying their group was not cooperating with the crew, when in fact they were, he said.
“It was 4 o’clock in the morning. The last thing any of us wanted to do was get up and make a mess,” Zehavi said.
Another student in the group, Michael Mamiye, said he was one of the first to be kicked off the plane. He said a flight attendant did not give him a chance to turn off his cell phone before asking him to “get off the plane.”
The same flight attendant then told the captain that the students were “making trouble” and not turning off their phones. The captain didn’t come out of the cockpit until the last second when he asked the group to leave, Mamiye said.
According to Mamiye, he and his classmates were quiet and sitting down as they were told. And when they were asked to leave, they left in a respectful and orderly fashion.
“We were more behaved than kids should be,” he said.
Both Beyda and Mamiye said the airline’s customer service did their best to accommodate the group by getting them on the next available flights. But the group had to be split up — some had connecting flights in Milwaukee — and they were in transit for a total of 12 hours, Mamiye said.
(Source: CNN)
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26 Responses
It’s just too bad this didn’t happen with a Chareidi Yeshiva.
If it were a Chareidi Yeshiva, rather than the M.O. YOF, we would already have a dozen comments here on Y.W. on how evil those Chillul Hashem inducing Chareidim are.
And the blogs would be running away with this story. All the M.O. Chareidi-haters would be saying how bad all Chareidim are.
And, of course, the Jewish Week and the Forward would be having a field day with multiple stories and editorials how we have to stop Chareidi population growth with this story being Exhibit A.
Having seen the complete and irrational behavior of flight attendants in the last 10+ years, I believe the Yeshiva of Flatbush version far more than the AirTran/Southwest version.
One thing is for sure, the crew was CLEARLY an AirTran crew because WN crews are far nicer and jovial.
No no, I’m sure it wasn’t bias or anything. After all, yeshiva of flatbush is MO and enlightened, so nobody would want to be biased against them.
Sad to say but on a flight to ey a whle grohp of girls were totally inconsiderate and non compliant and the chaperone a very frum looling rabbi totally ivnored it and the sterwadasess had what to say whe. they left the plane. a little planning would have helpefd avoid this
Southwest Airlines’ business model requires very short turnover times between landing and takeoff. It is no surprise to me that they would kick uncooperative teens — of any religion — off a flight.
‘probably a combination of tired, irritable flight crew and “leibidig” students. ‘flight crew could have exited culprits, given a stern warning and returned them to the plane. Yeshiva students would settled down, had they known they risked ejection. ‘does not look good for either side. Airline’s inflexibly rigid response to youthful exuberance appears to be extreme.
#1 nailed it on the head.
why was my comment just taken off!!???
#7 I totally agree.
For accuracy purposes some just choose to call it “Of Flatbush”
Who cares what school or what the observance level is….looking like Jews does not mix well for the outside world. We are treated differently and are not tolerated.
Again…. I don’t relish reading peoples opinions regarding the type of school. Firstly, although this isn’t a small town, many small Jewish communities can only have one Jewish school where you will find it coed. Secondly, based on my experience of schooling through the years, you sometimes find serious learners come out of “Modern schools” and likewise found friends from my “black hat” yeshiva who no longer keep Shabbos or kosher and Visa-Versa. Judging a single Talmud based on what school they attend or what shul they daven in is crazy. In conclusion, this happening at the airport was a chillul Hashem.
I feel anti semitism was definitely involved here & that the crew way over reacted.
I doubt very much that any other students of a public high school would have been treated so harshly.
When an OBVIOUS chaperon asks what the problem is and if they can assist, the first response should be ‘yes, thank you.” Courtesy of the flight crew will always get you where you are going faster than anything else. Given the opportunity, the chaperon could have even confiscated the cell phones from the uncooperative teens. The stewardess she be forced to apologize to the school and everyone should receive a refund for the flight.
I don’t trust the stewardesses (am I allowed to call them that in this PC world?). I have to fly out of town at least twice a year & find most of the stewards & stewardesses to not be the sharpest knifes in the drawer! They are trained to dumb down the passengers and treat us like we are 3 year olds & without them we would be lost in life! It starts with the highschool drop outs wearing blue disposable gloves working for the TSA & continues on board with the “flight attendants”. These kids might of been a little loud but so what? Aren’t these stewardesses also Mothers that have children?
So many opinions … so little information.
With 109 passengers they should have chartered their own plane.
Six Flags and rafting?
Sounds a bit overprivileged. Also means that most kids had been on planes and should have understood the rules. And what were the they doing starting a flight at that hour?
#16 Right on!!
If the kids were such a security threat why did the airline works so tirelessly to put them on other flights? It’s obvious to anybody ( besides those who think they know it all)_ that the other airline employees realized that the flight crew messed up big time and they were doing what they could to fix the mess!
I hope the airline offers the kids and school a huge apology although in today’s sue first society I doubt that will happen.
I wish all the kids at Yeshivah of Flatbush a great trip! ( and p.s when you read some of the nasty comments on this site ignore them – there will always be Jews who love to find fault)
Where are the Modern Orthodox rabbis condemning this massive Chillul Hashem? The M.O. silence is deafening!
#20 – There should be nothing obvious to anybody. From limited reporting there is a lot of information unknown. If anything, I think it would be obvious that an airline would think twice before removing 100+ people from a flight. Would seem to me (from limited info) that there must have been at least some poor behaviour (even if only from a small number of students). I do not know whether it was to the level of warranting asking the group to leave the flight. How about the students, parents and school accepting this fact and apologizing. How about a little honest introspection and not believing that we or our precious children could never do anything wrong. How about Jews (especially those of us who publically display our Jewishness) think a little harder about our behaviour and the impact it has on how people view us. How about we make the extra effort to have good manners, to be polite, to be helpful, to be considerate of others. I am looking forward to learning more infomation and hope that it will support the claims that our children did nothing wrong but even so this would seem to be a situation that could and should have been avoided. There is no positive to our people in this event. Anyone feel proud after reading this story?
17. I trust yeshiva of flatbush will be happy to accept your donation of a chartered jet for next year’s trip.
#22 after condemning 100 kids without knowing the facts how can you then write I hope to learn more information to support claims that our children did nothing wrong? Will you then apologize to each kid for ripping them without knowing the facts? Maybe send a large check to the school? exactly how do you expect to learn the facts? All I know is the last time I flew a plane the attendant actually screamed at me that my one year old child was crying to loud. I guess you would agree that it’s my fault!
#22 so because a flight attendant once screamed at you that means on a group trip of 100+ no one was misbehaving, not following instruction and the flight crew arbritarily (or prefudicially) decided to have them removed from the flight?
oops…previous comment should have been directed to #24 (not #22)