My mom and I were traveling back home to Montreal, Canada from Bucharest, Romania (we are Canadians) on an Air Canada Rouge (flight AC 1929). Our flight was scheduled to leave at 1:05 pm Romania time. We arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare. My seat was 36E (middle seat) and my mom 28D. When I arrived to my seat, there was a woman with a child, she said she needed the seat for the child. I did not argue I said ok and went to sit next to my mom and thought I would tell the flight attendant to help me with my seat. At 1:45 we were still in the plane, hadn’t taken off and people were still coming into the plane. No one had come to the seat next to my mom’s so I assumed it wasn’t occupied and I stayed there. We had been in the plane already for a while so at that point my mom went to the bathroom. A flight attendant then came to me after my mom left and said I needed to move. There were 3 seats in front of ours all occupied by 3 men. Turns out, one of the men was in the wrong seat and my seat was his seat. So I said ok I will move but where, since there is a child in my seat. So I said let’s wait a minute for my mom to come out of the bathroom and see where I can go. During this time, the man who was supposed to be in my seat did not want to take his seat (the one I’m in) because it’s a middle seat. So then the flight attendants and the man began to argue. The man only spoke French so I told the flight attendant I can translate (because he only spoke English). At that point the flight attendant got visibly angry at me and started asking me why my mom isn’t coming out, is she sick, what’s going on, why is she taking so long and that they will throw us out of the plane because she is sick. My mom had been in there for about 5 minutes and yes she was in there for number 2 but we had been waiting for so long on that plane already, if you have to go you have to go what can I say. So I went and knocked and told my mom to get out fast. She came, and at that point nothing else mattered. The flight attendants told us we had to leave the plane that we caused too long of a delay and we had to leave now. We were confused I mean what is going on. They called the police who then came to escort us out.

This was 6 hours ago. Ever since, we have been trying to get on a plane back home to Montreal. In Bucharest, there is no Air Canada counter. We called Air Canada 5 times they said there is nothing they can do. We called Lufthansa (that is who we booked our ticket through) they said Air Canada is the ones we need to call. They also said that in the online report that was made, we were kicked out because we caused a 2 hour delay of the plane (???!!!). I mean it’s ridiculous how can they lie like this? Our whole ordeal took 10 minutes maximum. The flight had already been delayed. When I called Air Canada they said yes we checked in very early compared to the last person that checked in so it’s suspicious that we could cause such a delay in that time but they can’t do anything because it’s our word against the managements’.

We are stuck in Bucharest, with very limited money and definitely not with the 4 000$ we need to get home (right now it’s 2k per person to leave within the next 2 weeks).

What can we do? Will we get reimbursed if we book a flight? We really just need to get home. Has anyone ever gone through this before? I can’t believe something like this would happen.

EDIT:
I understand that me not getting the flight attendant as soon as I saw someone was in my seat is my mistake. But that’s not why the entire plane was delayed, people were still checking in at the schedule departure time. Bucharest is a horrible airport, check in opens late because of lack of counters and it is always a huge mess.

Is it really enough to kick someone off a plane because of a seat issue? Or not even want to put them on a different flight?