US Airways Flight Canceled, Passengers Disembark in Support of Blind Passenger Asked to Leave (VIDEO)
US Airways passengers unhappy with the treatment of one of their own disrupted a flight and ended up being asked to leave, effectively canceling the flight. Passengers ended up taking a bus from Philadelphia to Long Island instead of flying on Wednesday night.
The standoff began when passenger Albert Rizzi, who is blind, was asked to leave the plane with his guide dog. Airport personnel said that the dog was out of control and they could not safely tak eoff unless Rizzi got his dog under control. However, Rizzi said that he did the best he could, given that the plane had to sit on the tarmac for 90 minutes, which left the dog in a restless state.
"The lady [stewardess] comes back and gets very insistent, and I said, 'Look, I don't understand what you want me to do. He's as best as he can, he's where he needs to be,'" Rizzi told WABC News. "And I hear nobody else moving, and as I'm walking to the front, I'm like wait a second, why am I the only one getting off?"
Get Our Latest News for FREE
Passengers decided then and there to take a stand.
"She came back and said to him, 'You've got about a minute to get this straightened out,'" one passenger recounted to WABC. "And he tried to do whatever he could, and she went back to the front of the plane. We were taxiing like we were going to take off.
"And at that point in time, we're about to take off, and all of a sudden the captain gets on the PA and says we have to head back to the terminal. We all kind of raised our voices and said this is a real problem. So the captain winds up coming out of the cockpit, and he basically asked us all to leave the aircraft," the passenger added.
Once the passengers disembarked, they decided to take a bus to get to their destination. Rizzi was stunned by their actions.
"I cannot believe the support I just got from everybody on the plane," Rizzi posted on his Facebook account. "Everybody supported me and is reporting this woman and are demanding her immediate dismissal before we even leave tonight."
US Airways officials told WABC and Newsday that they were only watching out for their crew and that Rizzi was "verbally abusive." There is an investigation into the matter.
Wach an interview with Rizzi here:
