Jewish Family Of 5 Booted From JetBlue Flight After Baby Kicks Seat
(JTA) — A family of five from Brooklyn was sent off a JetBlue flight in Florida, with the reason in dispute.
Tamir Raanan and his wife, Mandy Ifrah, were ready to fly home with their three children from Fort Lauderdale last month when their 1-year-old daughter kicked the seat of the passenger in front of her.
Ifrah told the New York Daily News that she apologized to the woman and then set about calming her child. She also told other news outlets and airport security that the woman told her she should tie her child’s feet down before switching seats.
The airline asserted that after “a verbal altercation that included physical threats,” the family was asked to deplane.
A video of the encounter with airline security taken on Raanan’s cellphone shows Ifrah speaking to her husband in Hebrew at one point. The family is Jewish and the couple are expatriate Israelis.
The airplane returned to the gate and the family was asked to leave the plane. A member of the JetBlue staff told the couple that they would receive a refund for the flight.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we need 500 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Our Goal: 500 gifts during our Passover Pledge Drive!
