Frontier Airlines responded after passengers claim that the airline removed a family from a flight due to a maskless baby.
The debacle took place on Sunday aboard flight 2878, which was gearing up to depart Miami for LaGuardia Airport in Queens, New York, at 7 p.m. The airline claims that the large group of passengers, all from the same family, refused to put on masks to comply with the federal mask mandate. The incident resulted in all passengers being forced from the plane. The flight was canceled and pushed back to the following day.
“Multiple people, including several adults, were asked repeatedly to wear their masks and refused to do so,” the airline said in a statement Sunday night. The company confirmed that law enforcement was called after the group refused to comply with the mask mandate and refused to leave the aircraft.
Fellow passengers insist that the group was removed because an infant with them did not have a mask.
“We were all on the plane when they [flight attendants] came on and saw the 18-month-old baby without a mask,” Hershey Greenbaum, another passenger on the flight, told The Post.
According to Greenbaum, the child’s parents told the attendants that they would try to fit a covering on the baby. However, attendants removed them anyway, despite pleas from other passengers who argued that the small child did not need a mask.
“All the people on the plane were getting really mad and rowdy because what are you going to do? It’s an 18-month old baby,” Greenbaum revealed.
In a video posted on Twitter, someone can be heard telling the staff that they would face consequences for unfairly removing the family from the plane. At another point in the video, someone else can be heard saying that the child was only one-years-old.
After the footage began to circulate, users slammed the company for removing the family because a baby was not wearing a mask, forcing them to issue another statement via Twitter, where they insisted that the removal was due to the adults not wearing masks. https://twitter.com/FlyFrontier/status/1366251501518131201
“The issue did not stem from a child under 2,” read the tweet from Frontier’s official account.
President Biden signed an order in January mandating masks on all passenger planes and public transportation. Before the order, each airline was responsible for enforcing its mask policy.
Nearly 15 police officers responded to the commotion after the aircraft was deplaned, though no one appeared to have been arrested.
