Petaling Jaya - A three-year-old boy who refused to fasten
his seatbelt during a Hong Kong-bound Cathay Pacific flight caused his
family to be ejected from the aircraft, but not before sparking a
commotion on board and delaying the flight.
The Straits Times reported that the boy’s parents, a mainland Chinese
couple, were urged to secure their three-year-old in his seat moments
before flight CX564 was due to take-off from Bangkok at 3:15pm on
Tuesday.
However, the parents are said to have refused to do so and wanted the
child to sit on his mother’s lap instead, prompting an argument with
flight attendants.
Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported a passenger by the
surname Lau telling Apple Daily that the boy had refused to sit down and
wear his seatbelt.
A video taken by Lau showed another female passenger getting irritated
with the commotion and asking the flight crew to “call the police”.
She was heard telling the Chinese couple in Cantonese: “We are customers too. Why are you allowed to harass the whole flight?"
The toddler’s father replied by saying they would not be “bullied” into
leaving. “If others keep harassing us, we will not leave the plane," he
could be heard saying in the Putonghua dialect.
The family eventually left the plane grudgingly after more airline staff intervened in the commotion.
Cathay Pacific later told SCMP that the decision to remove the family of
three was taken based on safety grounds, as the passengers refused to
follow the cabin crew’s instructions.
The airline said the incident delayed the flight by almost 30 minutes.
Just a day earlier, a similar incident was reported on a Hong Kong
Airlines flight returning from Bali, Indonesia.
The flight’s crew were forced to call the police when a three-year-old
boy refused to remain in his seat as the plane landed at Chek Lap Kok
airport in Hong Kong.
The boy’s grandparent carried the boy despite the cabin crew’s
insistence that the child should sit in his own seat and wear a
seatbelt.
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