Stories of passengers being kicked off of flights keep coming up in the news and each one seems odder than the next.
Most recently, a family was kicked off of a JetBlue flight due to of all things… a birthday cake! The family was supposed to fly from New York’s JFK Airport to Las Vegas.
Cameron Burke was ready to fly with his kids, Cameron Jr, 7 and Camille 9 and his wife Minta to celebrate her 40th birthday.
The family boarded with a cake (definitely an odd carry-on item) and allegedly given “unclear instructions about how and where to store the cake, a disagreement ensued between flight crew and the Burke family,” according to Yahoo News.
As usual with these situations, the airline and the passengers have very different accounts of what took place.
JetBlue says that the family “stored the cake in a compartment reserved for emergency equipment“. They also say that the Burkes were agitated, yelled and cursed at the crew, even questioning one of the crew member’s fitness to fly.
Burke says that no one in is family raised their voices and they were never given a reason as to why they had to leave the plane.
The family thinks that things got heated when the flight attendants couldn’t agree on what to do with the cake.
Yahoo includes a short video taken by the family. The recording begins after the confrontation so it doesn’t really validate one side or the other’s story.
What Did I Learn from This?
- In most of these airline- passenger disagreements, it seems to be hard to determine for sure who is at fault.
- A birthday cake is definitely not a good carry-on item.
- I’m not sure where this family thought JetBlue should store their cake?
- I also wonder why the Burke’s couldn’t buy a cake in Vegas? There’s got to be some decent bakeries there.
Find out more about what took place on this JetBlue flight here.
(FYI-I couldn’t find a good photo of a birthday cake so this one from Lucas’s 5th birthday party will have to do.)
James- I don’t keep track of what others post and I also don’t always publish a post the moment I write it.
John J- Thanks. I was chatting with a couple of flight attendants during a flight a while back and it does seem that everyone is quick to pull out their phone and record. I don’t know that this family’s intentions were to cause any trouble but it does seem odd that they were flying with a cake.
” I also wonder why the Burke’s couldn’t buy a cake in Vegas? There’s got to be some decent bakeries there.” –
MW: Excellent question! Wonder if this scenario was purposely “set-up” for a conflict and to obtain $? My experience has been JetBlue employees go out of their way to accommodate passengers.
Other bloggers in boarding area already put this news 2-3 days ago. Why you are so late?