Last weekend, Tremaine Graves flew on a Jet Blue flight from the Los Angeles airport to the city of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The day before he arrived in California for work, and he claimed he was exhausted, so he sat down in his seat next to the emergency doors and began dozing off.
Graves claims that in a short time a flight attendant woke him up and asked if he would have a problem handling the exit doors in case of an emergency since he is sitting in the aisle and therefore should be responsible if necessary. He insists that he answered the flight attendant because he wouldn’t have any problem and immediately went back to sleep. However, Graves says that a moment later the flight attendant woke him up and asked him to leave the flight for no apparent reason: “Suddenly the flight attendant woke me up and told me that I had to get off the plane because I didn’t answer her question and that’s not true.”
According to a passenger sitting next to Graves, when he was asked by the flight attendant if they could help in an emergency, “he was a little sleepy and had headphones on, then he took them off for a moment and answered yes and he would be able to operate the doors.” In a video taken by other passengers on the plane, they can be heard saying that they agree with Graves, and some even tried to make the flight attendant in charge understand that he had behaved appropriately. The video continues and the person in charge is heard telling Graves that she can help him get on another flight, but if he doesn’t leave the plane he will have to be forcibly removed, as well as the other passengers, and the Los Angeles Police Department will be called.
Afraid of being blacklisted by the company, or worse, arrested by the police, Graves got off the flight. He says he was put on a later flight, to another city in Florida, from where he had to travel to get his luggage at the original destination, and finally arrived home only the next day. “If the issue was a concern about my ability to handle the emergency exit door, why not move me to another seat?’ Graves asks on the phone.
According to media reports in the United States, the passengers described the person in charge of the flight attendants as “drunk with power”, and some even characterized him as “bad” and “insolent”. Graves says he has no idea why the flight attendant chose him as a target, and he has contacted lawyers to start legal proceedings against the airline Jet Blue, which has not yet responded to the case.