- Spirit Airlines said it removed a family of four from a flight because they refused to wear masks.
- The video of the incident shows the masked parents being told to leave while their maskless child is eating.
- Spirit says what is not shown is that parents moments earlier do not comply with mask mandates.
- See more stories on Insider’s business page.
Spirit Airlines defends its decision to deplane a flight over what it says was a mask violation of one family.
The Monday fight from Orlando, Florida, to Atlantic City, New Jersey, was finally delayed more than two hours after passengers were discharged and the family was allowed to board the flight again.
A video of a portion of the incident was posted on Twitter, but the full event remains unclear. In one video that is widely shared, a father, a pregnant mother and their two children are told to leave the plane. In the video, the mother and father both wear masks, although the father at some point sees him removed to talk to the flight attendant.
One of their children sits on the mother’s lap and does not wear a mask and eats.
“I told you, if you do not comply – you will have to get off. I did not want to do that,” an air hostess, who is apparently a different person than the person who originally confronted the family, becomes in the video posted by Public.TV.
The flight attendant later points to the child on the lap of the woman at the question of both parents who do not comply.
In the video, the flight attendant tells the family to leave the plane and says, “I will have to explode the plane and call the police” if they do not comply.
—Disclose.tv @ (@disclosetv) 5 April 2021
Federal law requires all passengers over 2 years of age to wear a mask if they are not eating on board a flight. President Joe Biden signed an executive order in January requiring all air travelers to wear masks on airplanes, and the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention has also mandated the provision of face masks on various means of transportation, including buses and subways.
It is unclear how old the child is who is not wearing the mask, but in one video of the incident, the parents say the child is only one month older than two years old, Newsweek reports.
On its website, Spirit Airlines states that it applies a mask policy in accordance with Biden’s executive order and other federal requirements. This requires all passengers to wear face masks while on board the aircraft and that it can only be removed if passengers are eating, drinking or taking medicine.
Spirit told Insider that the family was instructed to go out because the parents did not comply with the mask instructions, which according to the company were not captured on video and before the video that was commonly shared.
The airline said it is a standard protocol in the airline industry to board the entire aircraft if there is an incident with a passenger. The company also said the couple initially refused to leave, adding that it had dropped all the passengers. If the family had agreed to leave, Spirit said, the rest of the passengers would have stayed on board.
Newsweek reported that after the family spoke to a supervisor and agreed to comply, it departed on the same flight.
According to another video of the incident, the father said in the incident that one flight attendant did not tackle the plane. Spirit said the crew had been swapped, but did not make clear whether this is standard protocol for such scenarios.
Orlando police confirmed to Newsweek that they had been called.
“Just before noon, our officers were called to a general riot with a Spirit Airlines flight departing from Orlando International Airport,” a police spokesman told Newsweek. “Upon arrival, officers saw that the flight was in the middle of boarding. Our officers stood while Spirit Airlines solved the problem.”
Over the past year, workers in the airline, food and retail industries have been tasked with enforcing mask mandates among customers, some of whom were unwilling to comply. Masked clothing has been largely politicized since March 2020, and some Republicans argue that the COVID-19 pandemic is less serious than it seems.