NEW YORK (AP) — A group of about 100 high school students traveling from New York to Atlanta were thrown off an AirTran flight, along with their chaperones, after the pilot and crew lost patience with some kids who wouldn't sit down and put away their cellphones.
Seniors from the Yeshiva of Flatbush in Brooklyn were on the flight about 6 a.m. Monday at LaGuardia Airport. AirTran's parent company, Southwest Airlines, said in a statement that flight attendants asked passengers several times to take their seats and put their mobile devices away.
The airline said that when some didn't comply, the captain repeated the request. When that didn't work either, the whole group of students was ordered to disembark for safety reasons, the airline said. The flight was delayed for about 45 minutes while the students filed out of the Boeing 737, which seats about 137 people, leaving the plane mostly empty.
Rabbi Seth Linfield, executive director at Yeshiva of Flatbush, said administrators Tuesday were still looking into the disagreement, but he said in a statement that "preliminarily, it does not appear that the action taken by the flight crew was justified."