‘It’s wrong.’ Couple, newborn baby ordered off flight in Charlotte, video shows
Editor’s note: On Wednesday, Dec. 15, national civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump said Allan Ali and Kamia Hoilett had retained him as legal counsel.
American Airlines is investigating a flight crew’s actions in kicking a couple and their newborn girl off a plane before take-off in Charlotte this past week.
Allan Ali posted a video of the incident on Instagram, along with a comment calling the way he and his family were treated “absolutely disrespectful!” In a statement to The Charlotte Observer on Friday night, the airline called what’s shown on the family’s video “concerning.”
“This matter has our full attention and we will take appropriate action as necessary,” according to the airline statement.
The incident began when a flight attendant asked the couple to get up to allow another passenger into his seat, Ali told The Shade Room news site.
Ali said his partner, Kamia Hoilett, asked the flight attendant to give them more space as they tried to get into the aisle, and the flight attendant asked, “Is this going to be a problem?” In Ali’s video, Hoilett is seen holding an infant but the initial conversation between the couple and the flight attendant is not captured on footage Ali later posted online.
Ali said the situation deteriorated when the couple let the man in and were about to sit back down.
“Sit down and buckle your seat,” Ali said the flight attendant rudely told his partner. That prompted Hoilett to say she didn’t like how the flight attendant was talking to her, Ali said.
The video that Ali posted on Instagram shows what happened next.
The couple is back in their seats and buckled up, with Hoilett holding their blanket-swaddled baby against her chest, when a female and a male flight attendant approach to escort them from the plane.
“I didn’t get aggressive with her,” Hoilett tells the female flight attendant, referring to the previous flight attendant “ .... I didn’t do anything.”
“I wasn’t here,” the flight attendant replies. “The captain made the request.”
Their child, Ali says, is 7-weeks old.
As Ali records the encounter, he can be heard in the video saying: “We have witnesses. I just want this to be known: She has a newborn. You’re putting her off the plane due to the negligence and unprofessionalism of one of your staff members.”
A male flight attendant then tells Ali to stop filming.
The camera screen goes blank, and Ali can be heard asking in a louder voice, “You’re going to knock the phone out of my hand?”
“If we are to be treated unfairly, should we take it?” he asks in the video. “We paid to be on this flight.”
“The people sitting in this area know what happened,” Ali says in the video. “It’s wrong.”
He also called the encounter “a travesty.”
With the video back on and the couple gathering their belongings to leave, Ali can be heard shouting at a flight attendant: “You should be ashamed of yourself. You weren’t here, yet you took the opinion of somebody else over somebody carrying a child, a baby.
“We’re not fools,” he tells the flight attendant. “We’re educated, master’s degrees, working hard. We don’t come here for conflict. Let’s go.”
In its statement, American Airlines said airline officials are “actively looking into” the incident.
“Our values demand that all customers are treated fairly and with respect, and we find the video posted by the family concerning,” according to the statement.
“We have reached out to the customers involved to understand their experience, and are seeking additional information from other passengers on board and team members who were present,” AA officials said in the statement.
The family was rebooked on a later flight the same day and made it back home to Philly, according to the airline.
This story was originally published December 11, 2021 at 1:48 PM with the headline "‘It’s wrong.’ Couple, newborn baby ordered off flight in Charlotte, video shows."