JetBlue apologized this weekend to the Massachusetts mother of a three-year-old girl who peed in her airplane seat because flight attendants wouldn’t let her use the bathroom while the plane was on the tarmac.
Jennifer Deveraux of Newton, Mass, said that when she got up to clean up after her daughter’s accident, flight attendants reported her to the pilot. “I said, ‘Please give me a break,” Deveraux told CBS Boston. “My daughter had an accident because you wouldn’t let me take her to the bathroom. After I clean it up I will sit down,'” The flight attendants reported her anyway, and the pilot threatened to take the plane back to the gate to turn a “noncompliant passenger” over to security.
“It wasn’t about bad customer service at that point,” Deveraux said of the Monday flight. “It was about bad human decency. My daughter was sitting in a pool of urine and I couldn’t do anything about it,”
JetBlue apologized to Deveraux and her family on Saturday. “This incident in question happened while the aircraft was on an active taxiway, when FAA regulations require all customers to remain seated due to the risk of sudden aircraft movement,” JetBlue spokesman Sebastian White said in a statement. “The crew made a safety and FAA regulation-based decision.”
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Write to Charlotte Alter at charlotte.alter@time.com