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Frontier Passenger Arrested After Complaining About Vomit On Seat

A passenger on a Frontier Airlines flight departing from Las Vegas found herself in handcuffs after objecting to vomit in the seats she occupied with her teenage daughter. The airline says it was only after the passenger became disruptive and then refused to leave the plane that police were summoned to deal with the volatile situation.

A Frontier Airlines passenger on a flight departing Las Vegas McCarran International Airport (LAS) saw a customer service issue escalate into her being arrested in front of her 14-year-old daughter on Saturday. Rosetta Swinney says when she and her daughter realized they we seated in seats with vomit on them, she immediately complained to a crew member. She says it was her daughter who first became aware of their disturbing predicament, adding that the flight attendant couldn’t have been much less help.

“She jumped up to say mom! My hands are wet,” Swinney told ABC News. “She smelled it. She says, ‘this is vomit, mom.’ So we went to look. It was on the bag, all over her shirt, her hands. I don’t know if [the flight attendant] got defensive about it. But she turned around to me and said, ‘that’s not my job.’ If it wasn’t her job. Why wasn’t it attended to?”

As the dispute escalated, Swinney was ordered off of the plane. When she refused to disembark, police were called and she was eventually taken into custody after once again refusing to leave the aircraft. Fellow passengers filmed the aftermath of the disagreement as the upset customer was being led away by police.

“They’re going to try and arrest me because they have throw-up on the plane,” Swinney can be heard exclaiming in the now viral video. “This is not right. This is not right. All y’all see what happened on that plane. All y’all see what happened on that plane!”

We are just trying to make it home y’all… You would not believe what happened on the plane. We arrived 2 hrs early…

Posted by Nïkkï Nickole on Saturday, April 20, 2019

The young daughter can be seen in the footage sobbing as her mother is escorted from the gate. The 53-year-old said her daughter was placed in child protective custody while she was being held on charges related to failure to comply with airport rules and trespassing.

“I felt humiliated,” Swinney later told reporters. “What really hurt me is for my child to see me getting handcuffed and taken away from her. Twelve hours I was in jail – twelve hours!”

While the airline blames Swinney for the entire episode, the disgruntled flyer says the crew members not only refused to clean the sickening mess but became vindictive when she insisted on a basic level of common decency. She also disputes Frontier’s contention that she and her daughter were given the option of moving to non-vomit covered seats.

“The flight attendants apologized and immediately invited the mother and her teenage daughter to move to either end of the plane so that the seat area could be cleaned,” the airline said in a statement about the incident this weekend. “The mother and daughter were also told that once boarding was complete they would be provided other seats if available. The daughter was also offered cleaning products and invited to use the lavatory to wash up. The mother was unsatisfied with the response and became disruptive. As a result, the flight attendants determined that the mother and daughter should be deplaned and accommodated on another flight. The mother refused, and following procedure, law enforcement was called.”

[Image Source: Shutterstock]

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12 Comments
T
Tailgater January 30, 2020

Geez, doesn't the flight attendant get seriously written up or even fired? Based on passenger remarks/video it sure looks egregious behavior by FT.

B
BF263533 May 1, 2019

Dr. Dao where are you?

G
Gigantor April 29, 2019

This story is simply way to much for me to stomach.

S
skidooman April 27, 2019

Honestly we won't know for sure who is guilty before fellow passengers corroborate either of the versions. What we can say for sure though is that Frontier needed to clean its plane and did not. OK, mistakes happen. But this airline doesn't have exactly a spotless reputation regarding customer service, so it sure doesn't look (nor smell) good.

K
ksandness April 27, 2019

Buy your tickets solely on the basis of the lowest price, and you get an airline that can't be bothered to maintain minimum standards of hygiene. Didn't the FAs on the previous flight notice that someone had heaved all over the seats? Didn't they send for a cleaning crew? Or did the cleaning crew do nothing but empty the trash? That mother and daughter deserve a full apology, a flight home, and cash compensation for a disgusting experience.