Alaska Airlines Kicks Woman Off Flight For Having Cancer and No Note
[There was a video here]
Elizabeth Sedway claims she and her family were booted from their flight from Hawaii to San Jose Monday after the crew on an Alaska Airlines plane learned she had cancer, but no doctor's note clearing her to fly. "I’m being removed like I’m a criminal or contagious—because I have cancer,” she can be heard saying in video from the plane she posted to Facebook. "Does anybody wonder how I got to Hawaii?"
Sedway, 51, the San Francisco Chronicle reports, suffers from a type of blood cancer called multiple myeloma and apparently first caught the airline's attention when she was seen wearing a surgical mask while sitting in a handicap section before boarding her flight. From Sedway's video post on Facebook (edited for clarity):
Today, we were at gate 8 ready to depart on Alaska Airlines for San Jose. An airline employee saw me seated in the handicap section of the boarding area. She asked me if I needed anything. The first time, I said no. The second time, [I] said, well I might need a bit of extra time to board, sometimes I feel weak. Because I said the word "weak," the Alaska Airlines employee called a doctor she claimed was associated with the airlines. After we board the plane, an Alaska representative boarded the plane, and told us I could not fly without a note from a doctor stating that I was cleared to fly. The video is of us being removed from the plane.
“It was shocking. I mean I’ve flown, we’ve flown for five years with this diagnosis, and I felt humiliated," Sedway told CBS San Francisco.
Alaska Airlines has since apologized to the family, with a rep for the airline telling KTLA, "While our employee had the customer’s well-being in mind, the situation could have been handled differently." They refunded the family's plane tickets and covered the cost of their hotel stay.
