N.C. Woman Arrested After Complaining of Vomit in Frontier Airlines Seat

A Frontier Airlines passenger bound for North Carolina was kicked off her flight and arrested after an alleged confrontation with a flight attendant over vomit in her daughter's seat, multiple reports state.

Rosetta Swinney was heading home from Las Vegas after attending a friend's wedding over Easter weekend when she learned her flight was delayed for cleaning. However, once she got on board, the North Carolina woman said she noticed her daughter's seat was still dirty.

"She jumped up to say mom! ‘My hands are wet,’" Swinney told WTVD-TV. "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."

Swinney alerted a flight attendant to the mess, but was ignored.

"I don't know if she got offensive 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?" Swinney said.

In a statement, Frontier Airlines said the flight attendant offered to switch Swinney and her daughter's seats on either end of the plane while staff cleaned the seat, but Swinney disputes the airline's version of events. Swinney claims she only confronted the flight attendant after her requests were ignored.

Authorities were eventually called to remove her and her daughter from the plane.

"I felt humiliated," Swinney said. "I felt more bad that my child had to see me be handcuffed and taken away from her."

Swinney had to spend several hours in jail and her 14-year-old daughter was placed in protective custody. Frontier refunded the cost of the flight and she was able to book another flight with Delta Airlines.

Frontier Airlines released a statement about the incident in which they said Swinney was unsatisfied with the flight attendant's offer to help.

"During boarding of flight 2066 from McCarran International Airport (LAS) to Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU) last week, two passengers told the flight attendants that vomit was present in their seat area. 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 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. Law enforcement then requested that everyone deplane so that the mother and daughter could be removed allowing the aircraft to be re-boarded and depart. We apologized to our passengers for the inconvenience caused by the departure delay. The safety of passengers and crew is our top priority at Frontier."

Swinney faces a misdemeanor trespassing charge.

Photo: Getty Images


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