Alaska Airlines passenger says she was kicked off flight for having a mimosa
‘I thought it was a joke,’ says woman
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Louise Thomas
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A woman is “livid” after she claims she was removed from an Alaska Airlines flight for drinking a mimosa at the airport bar.
Tiktok user Kandace H shared her experience on the social media platform, alongside the caption: “THIS IS COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE! I AM LIVID!
“The flight attendants on flight 714 from Portland to Vegas need to be fired! I was BLATANTLY lied on and removed from the plane…UTTERLY embarrassed by your staff!”
She added the hashtag “discrimination” and said, having flown with the airline many times, she “only had pleasant things to say about it until today”.
In the video, Kandace alleges that she was kicked off her flight home to Vegas even though she wasn’t drunk.
She said that she and some colleagues had enjoyed a drink at the airport bar in Portland, where she had drunk one and a half mimosas before boarding the plane.
“They just pulled me off the plane, we were literally about to take off,” Kandace says in the video, which has been viewed 875,000 times at the time of writing.
“The lady comes up to me, and she’s like ‘excuse me ma’am,’ and I’m thinking she’s going to tell me to put my backpack underneath the seat because I had it in my lap.”
Instead, Kandace claimed the flight attendant said she had to get off the plane.
“I asked her like four times: ‘are you kidding me?’,” she said.
She says in the video that the deplaning had come about after she went to use the aircraft toilet ahead of take-off. Having never used the in-flight bathroom before, she asked a member of cabin crew about the facilities, who told her to go in and lock the door, and the light would come on automatically.
“I go in the bathroom, the light didn’t come on,” said Kandace, so she asked the flight attendant for help.
Meanwhile, she was on the phone to colleagues who were flying with a different airline.
Kandace said that, because she was on a call, she was in the toilet for around 10 minutes; when she came out, the flight attendant repeatedly asked if she was OK.
“I was like, ‘I mean I did have a drink at the bar, but who doesn’t? There are literally bars at the airport’,” she said. “I had a mimosa; well, one and a half, I didn’t even finish the second one because I had to get to the gate.”
After that, Kandace claims she was “pulled off the plane” and that the flight attendant accused her of “slurring her words” and whispering “I’m drunk, shhh,” which she denied doing.
“I don’t have a problem with saying that I had a drink, but I’m not belligerent, I’m not drunk,” she said. “I literally thought it was a joke.”
Kandace said her original flight had been at 5.30pm, but after being deplaned, she was forced to wait until 10pm to fly home, where she wouldn’t land until midnight.
“I am p***ed,” she concluded the video.
The Independent has approached Alaska Airlines for comment.
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