Bussiness
Boy, 10, thrown off plane and father removed after refusing to wear seatbelt
Dramatic scenes unfolded on a Latam flight 4049 when a young lad was booted off the plane for not wearing his seatbelt.
The flight, which was set to travel from Santa Marta to Bogota in Colombia, was thrown into chaos as the 10 year old refused to follow the crew’s instructions, prompting the captain to abandon take-off and head back to the gate to eject the child.
Witnesses on the flight claimed the boy was adamant about not wanting to stay seated or fasten his seatbelt. The kerfuffle caused over an hour’s delay for the 8.20am service at Simon Bolivar International Airport.
A clip circulating on X, previously known as Twitter, captures irate passengers demanding the removal of the child and urging staff to “do something”.
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Also caught in the video was a little one getting increasingly agitated by the hold-up, while airline employees worked to soothe everyone and resume the journey. This toddler, reported by El Colombiano, turned out to be the same youngster who had defied the seatbelt rule.
In a bid to keep travellers in the loop, a flight attendant announced: “Dear passengers, we inform you that if the flight regulations are not complied with, we cannot start the flight. They were not complied with, we had to return. And now we are waiting for the passengers who did not comply with the regulations to please disembark. We cannot start the flight this way due to safety.”
Passengers on a flight were left fuming and shouting at a dad and his young son, urging them to get off the plane so it could depart, as reported by MailOnline. An airport staff member eventually boarded the aircraft and spoke to the father, who then carried his son out.
While some passengers supported the airline’s decision to eject the father and child, one woman was overheard defending the boy, saying, “He has rights, it’s a child.”
In a separate incident back in May, a Frontier Airlines flight was forced to deplane after a passenger wouldn’t follow exit row instructions. Earlier, a Spirit Airlines flight from Las Vegas was delayed when a woman tried to bite another passenger and hurled racial slurs at police officers as she was escorted off the plane following a complete deplaning.
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