Airline passenger arrested after complaining about vomit on seat

Paper air sickness bag on airplne seat
By Christian Fleetwood


A woman has been arrested onboard a Frontier Airlines flight after complaining about vomit on her daughter’s seat.

WBTV reported that Rosetta Swinney was flying from Las Vegas to Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, when she discovered that her daughter’s seat was soaked with vomit.

On their way back from an Easter weekend wedding in Nevada, Swinney, 53, and her 14-year-old-daughter’s flight was delayed, so staff could clean the plane.

When the two boarded, Swinney says her daughter found vomit in her seat.

“She jumped up and said, ‘Mom, my hands are wet.’ She smelled it. She said, ‘This is vomit, Mom.’ So, we went to look. It was on the bag, all over her shirt, her hands,” Swinney said.

After asking a flight attendant for help, Swinney was met with a defiant reply: “She turned around to me and said, ‘That’s not my job,’” Swinney told WTVD.

Frontier Airlines said in a statement to Forbes that “the flight attendants apologised and immediately invited the mother and her teenage daughter to move to either end of the plane so that the seat area could be cleaned.”

The airline also claimed that Swinney “became disruptive.”

Authorities were then called to remove the mother and daughter from the plane.

Swinney, as well as witnesses to the account, disputed the airline’s portrayal, saying the flight attendant never attempted to clean up the mess nor offered to reassign her seat.

A witness on board the flight later posted video on social media of the event showing Swinney waiting calmly for the situation to be resolved. Forbes reported that when the airline said that Swinney would have to deplane, she refused and was subsequently arrested.

“I felt humiliated,” Swinney said. “I felt more bad that my child had to see me be handcuffed and taken away from her.”

Swinney was put in jail for 12 hours, and her daughter was placed in child protective custody.

WBTV reported that after getting out of jail, the mother bought a $1,000 ticket home through Delta Air Lines. Frontier reportedly refunded the cost of Swinney’s original flight.

She has since hired a civil rights attorney to fight her misdemeanor trespassing charge.

Travel Weekly has contacted Frontier Airlines for comment.

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