United Airlines physically removed an Oregon family this last week from their flight home from Disney World because the flight crew feared for the safety of their passengers. What had them so frightened? A 15-year old autistic girl. Yes, that’s right, the flight crew was so terrified of this one teenage girl they made an emergency landing just to get her and her family off the plane. Watch the video of the family’s removal, and please note how scary this slight, headphone bedecked young woman appears as she is removed from the plane – without any need for restraints or force!
From NBC News:
Dr. Donna Beegle of Tigard, Oregon … was returning home with her family from a trip to Walt Disney World last week when her daughter Juliette became agitated because she was hungry during a layover in Houston, Beegle said.
Beegle said that after she persuaded a flight attendant to give her daughter some hot food, Juliette had calmed down and was quietly watching a movie when “the next thing we hear is we’re doing an emergency landing in Salt Lake City,” Beegle told NBC station KGW of Portland, Oregon. “We have a passenger on board with a behavior issue.”
Police officers boarded the plane and escorted the entire family off, Beegle told the station. “As a mom it ripped my heart out,” she said. “I was shaking.”
The incident was recorded in a video posted to YouTube that Beegle authenticated [see above]. In the video, a passenger can be heard remarking, “It’s ridiculous.” Another says, “That’s going to be a lawsuit.”
That unnamed passenger is right, and my guess is United settles that lawsuit as quickly and quietly as possible. This is an ugly example of prejudice on the part of that flight crew. The mother had her daughter under control. I’ve been on a lot of flight where kids were overly rowdy, or babies screamed the whole trip, and I never once saw a flight attendant suggest that those kids were so disruptive it merited an emergency stop and the removal by law enforcement of those kids and their families. But then none of those situations involved an autistic child.
My teenage nephew has an autistic spectrum disorder. Sometimes things can set him off, and he can be loud and upset until his Mom or Dad calm him down. But he’s no more of a threat (less actually) than other kids his age. There’s a stereotype going around, which some people seem to have incorporated into their tiny bigoted brains, that autistic children are prone to act out violently and thus should be considered dangerous. As a generalization, it is no more accurate than the stereotype that black men are angry, and prone to act violently.
Thousands of people with autism and other disabilities travel on planes, trains and automobiles every year. Undoubtedly many of them fly on United Airlines. Unless the company comes clean on this incident, however, and apologizes to the Beegle family, I suspect many of them might have second thoughts about continuing to fly the “friendly skies” in the future.
