Cancer Patient Kicked off Alaska Airlines Flight
LIHUE, Hawaii, April 8 (UPI) — A California woman said she was kicked off an Alaska Airlines flight in Hawaii because she has cancer and did not have a note from her doctor.
Elizabeth Sedway, 51, of Granite Bay said she and her family were due to fly Monday from Lihue Airport to San Jose, Calif., and a flight attendant approached her while she was wearing a surgical mask in the the handicap section of the boarding area.
“She asked me if I needed anything,” Sedway wrote on Facebook.
Sedway said she initially said “no” to the woman, but was asked the same question a second time after a few minutes and she responded that she might “need a bit of extra time to board.”
“Sometimes I feel weak,” Sedway recalled saying to the flight attendant.
Sedway said she and her family had boarded the plane before an airline representative came onto the vehicle and said she would not to allowed to fly without a note from her doctor clearing her to fly.
“Because I said the word weak, the Alaska Airlines employee called a doctor she claimed was associated with the airlines,” she wrote. “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.”
“I’m being removed like I’m a criminal or contagious because I have cancer,” Sedway says in video she took of her family being removed from the plane. “My family is being forcibly removed from an airplane because I have cancer, no note to fly.”
Sedway said she emailed her oncologist and got a response authorizing her to fly, but she was not allowed to reboard the plane.
“What more can I give you?” Sedway recalled asking airline workers.
Sedway, who has multiple myeloma, said she missed two chemotherapy sessions as a result of being removed from the flight.
“They need to polish their policies, apply some common sense,” Sedway told KNTV of the airline. “A simple mask, a word, shouldn’t be enough to pull a whole family off an airplane.”
Alaska Airlines spokeswoman Bobbie Egan said the “communication breakdown was on our part.”
“We regret the inconvenience Ms. Sedway experienced yesterday and are very sorry for how the situation was handled,” Egan wrote in an emailed statement to KTLA-TV. “Her family’s tickets have been refunded and we’ll cover the cost of her family’s overnight accommodations in Lihue. While our employee had the customer’s well-being in mind, the situation could have been handled differently.”
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