United Airlines Passenger Forced Off Flight over FAA Approved Child Seat

According to 39-year-old Melissa Bradley, she was removed from a United Airlines flight last Wednesday because the infant carrier approved by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) she bought didn’t fit in the plane’s narrow seats. She was simply trying to do the right thing by getting the airline seat for her 1-year-old daughter, but the economy-class seats were too narrow for the child seat to fit.

This wasn’t the first time this happened to Bradley, as she also encountered this problem trying to fly 2 days before Christmas. She was trying to travel with Skywest from Aspen to San Francisco, but the child seat didn’t fit in the seat. However, she wasn’t removed from the plane in the first encounter.

In the incident last Wednesday at San Francisco International Airport, Bradley says that she was forced to leave the aircraft due to a dispute about the issue. Rahsaan Johnson, a spokesman for United airlines, says that the mother refused attempts from the flight attendant to accommodate her and the child seat, which unfortunately didn’t fit in the assigned seat. After she became disruptive, he explained, the captain elected to have her leave. He added that she was interfering with the ability of the crew to prepare the cabin for a safe departure, as well as taking pictures of other passengers, even after being asked to stop.

Bradley says that she wasn’t being disruptive and was taking the photos as proof of the issue. When talking with an FAA inspector after the incident with Skywest, she explains, they had asked her if she had a picture, so she was taking one of the narrow row on the United aircraft. She also denied that the crew tried to accommodate her, saying that she was asking just to simply be moved and would have been happy just to have a seat on the flight.