Mother and 2-year-old child kicked off Spirit Airlines flight

An embarrassing ordeal for a Houston woman when Spirit Airlines kicks her and her family off a flight, after her 2-year-old son wouldn’t stop crying.

Mom Mei Rui, a pianist and cancer researcher, tells KHOU she was on her way to New York to participate in a cancer research study. Before the cabin door closed, she began breastfeeding her child. Flight attendants told her to stop and put the child in his seat.

Despite not having finished, Rui complies. Her child begins to cry. In footage filmed by Rui and posted to Facebook, flight attendants instruct her to leave. Rui can be heard asking what she did wrong, flight attendants say she didn’t comply with instructions.

She writes, “The only 'non-compliance' is that my son was crying for 25 minutes straight after I force-buckled him into the airplane seat.”

In a subsequent post, Rui explains the flight had already been delayed for 3 hours. She writes, “I had never imagined something like this could happen to our family. I am heartbroken … ”

In a statement, Spirit Airlines said, “Our records indicate a passenger was removed from Flight 712 after refusing to comply with crew instructions several times during taxi to runway and safety briefing.”

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