“It was extremely traumatic for me and my family,” the mother said.
A mother and her six children were discharged from a JetBlue Airways flight on Wednesday after their 2-year-old daughter refused to wear a mask.
“It was extremely traumatic for me and my family,” the mother, Chaya Bruck, 39, of Brooklyn, said in an interview with ABC News.
Bruck said she tried to put a mask on her youngest child, Dina, but she pulled it off.
“Should I tie her hands, what should I do?” Bruck asked the JetBlue flight attendant according to a video of the incident. “We need to deepen,” the attendant replied, explaining that the airline has a zero tolerance policy.
Other passengers on board the flight to New York from Orlando tried to stop for Bruck, according to the video and passengers.
“All the passengers were up, crying and screaming and saying ‘that’s not fair. Do not do that to that mother,'” passenger Anny Taveras, from Kissimmee, Florida, told ABC News. The flight finally began after everyone had planned.
U.S. airlines continue to tighten their mask requirements, and have even banned passengers who do not comply.
JetBlue, along with most major airlines, requires every child 2 years and older to wear face cover to fly, the airline said in a statement.
A JetBlue spokesman said the airline’s policy was last updated on August 10. “To ensure that everyone wears face covering – adults and children alike” and is consistent with CDC guidelines, which state that children under 2 should not wear masks.
Taveras and Bruck, however, claim that during the announcements, the pilot said children who could not wear a mask were released.
Another passenger, Chardette Poinsette, who was traveling with her young son, claims that her family also escaped the flight.
“I stood up for her, and I think I was the one who stood out the most because what I said was correct,” Poinsette said.
Both the Bruck and Poinsette families fly at home on several American airlines.
“I need some time to recover from this,” Bruck said. “My kids need to recover from this.”
Amanda Maile and Jennifer Leong of ABC News contributed to this report.
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