Family Kicked Off Plane After Water Request

I'm actually a former patient of Dr. Roslin's, and I credit him with saving my life. He has been a professional at the top of his field, and an amazing person to have met. The only time I have ever seen him get mad was to protect the safety of someone else. Goos for him for standing up.

Why would anyone put themselves through four years of medical school, an additional four to six years of surgical residency, only to end up flying Spirit Airlines ?

Maybe the guy is cheap

I would have broke my own water and drank that.

This is retarded.

Stop Bitching and just give the prego some water ! It's not like this was a normal case, She's Pregnant ! What if she had complications due to the lack of fluids ? What if she had a breakdown due to all the arguing over a bottle of water ? there are some policies that you follow at a given time,place, and then there are times when it's just commonsense not to follow them . This would have been one of those times . Regardless if the doctors request was fair or not .

I live in a small town, with a small airport 5 minutes from my house. And when you get through security your options on the other side are..... nill. There are NO vendors on the other side of security clearance to purchase a beverage from. I think this was a common-sense violation more than anything else, but on both parts. Were passengers allowed up to use the bathroom? There is a sink with water there. Severe dehydration could (ick) still be avoided if there was real danger. But honestly, if your term of pregnancy is so severe that your body can't handle two hours of warmth without additional hydration, you really have no business being on an airplane in the first place. That said, the flight personnel need a true wake up call. Why isn't there long-wait protocol in place??

GROSS not supposed to drink the bathroom sink water in the airplane...

Isn't there a restroom past the security checkpoint? I'm pretty sure they don't confiscate empty water bottles. Just fill it from the restroom faucet. I would trust water from ground-based plumbing over anything from the plane's water tank any day. Lord only knows when was the last time they drained the tank and how well it was chlorinated.

Why are you posting on Gothamist if you live in the middle of nowhere? Isn't there a Bumblefuckist?

Zing!

Shockingly enough, this is news that's important and reported outside of your little corner of the world, as this airline does actually leave your airport occasionally. Narcissistic much?

That doctor is selfish. If they gave his wife water they would have to serve the other passengers. The plane would have to be delayed if they got clearance to take off. Judging by the photo the doc needs to go on a diet and set a healthy example for his patients.

1) 7 months pregnant is the borderline of "shouldn't be getting on a plane"

2) For myself I come prepared with at least a half gallon. For my pregnant wife (never happened yet), I'd bring at least 1.5 gallons.

3) If it's "too cumbersome" for a man with a pregnant wife to come prepared with his own supplies, then refer back to #1, where she shouldn't have been traveling anyway

4) This is why sane people don't fly Spirit Airlines

5) I don't find flying to be so terrible like everyone else does, even given the amount of arguments I've gotten into with the TSA about the size of my little shampoo bottle. Adjusted to inflation, the average price of a flight has gone down over the past 10-15 years, thus we get less but all appreciate the cost savings and need to do more to take care of our own problems.

***I am not from the Middle East or Far East. If I were, I might not agree that flying is a cakewalk, given their tendencies to get stopped and frisked***

Sounds like both parties are at fault for being idiots in this instance.

1.5 gallons is a lot of water to carry. Since water is over 8 pounds per gallon, that's over 12 pounds of water you want to carry. Along with all your other luggage and carry-ons, I'm mighty impressed that you can haul all that, not to mention getting it past the flight attendants who have standing orders to enforce carry-on limits.

1.5 gallons!!! Hahahhaha! You're out of your mind. Do you also bring 3 days of food, iodine capsules, a two-man tent and a coleman stove?

Let's obviously blame the pregnant paying customer, stuck on a poorly ventilated cabin for 2 hours. I'm surprised people were allowed to use the bathroom.

1) Yes, for flights of 4+ hours, I buy 2 liters once through security. For shorter flights, I'll make do with 1 liter. The pregnant lady is carrying 30+ extra pounds, her husband can make do with an extra gallon of water. From what I understand, pregnant females can (understandably so) be irritable and hard to commiserate with, so a gallon of water should probably make this guy look like he's doing his part.

2) Doctor's permission aside, it's still difficult for a pregnant woman to get out of bed, let alone deal with the hassle of flying; common sense should trump medical opinions.

3) SPIRIT F'ING AIRLINES IS GARBAGE, you get what you pay for with your $75 round trip ticket, which is just short of being forced to wrestle a terrorist to the ground.

4) Even if they weren't on Spirit, it's unreasonable to assume that any airline experience won't involve some annoyances beyond the ability of a very pregnant female to properly deal with.

5) Nothing about this story suggests that the husband & wife were disruptive to a point of needing to be removed from the flight, but this whole situation could have been avoided through proper planning and/or common sense.

Pregnant women can fly up to 36 weeks (9 months); a pregnancy is actually 10 months in duration (40 weeks). Pregnant women can get out of bed. I have heard that some of them even work and wear shoes.

Let's get to the fundamental issuer here: I'm not sure why they are making a big deal out the guy's wife being pregnant as it is not acceptable to keep anyone on a plane with an overheated cockpit for 2 hours without offering them water.

I agree with you that Spirit Airlines sucks.

Seriously, you carry a half gallon of water on the plane. Since you can't bring it from home that means you buy it at the airport for $5 a litre so you spend $10-$15 on water, which on most flights they will give you all you want. Seriously, you don't get a back ache from carrying two three large bottles around?

a) it took two hours for the woman to need to request something, which says to me that they probably boarded with enough to last them until well after beverage service was set to begin; it is unreasonable to expect them to have enough water for an entire day.

b) if the cabin itself was overheated, that means that they didn't have appropriate air conditioning/heating levels and it would've been reasonable for anyone to request water at that time.

c) if her doctor deemed her fit to fly, you have no basis for commenting on that aspect of the story.

The hell were they expecting? It's Spirit...

BTW asking for water on Spirit Airlines is going way too far. You are lucky they have a Pilot let alone a beverage service....

"Doctors Earn a Lot of Money" myth dispelled by doc traveling on Spirit Airlines. whew

Their student debt is a bitch. He's probably still paying it off.

Does Spirit Airlines realize they left the legal faucet running? That glass of water and the idiot employee attached to it are going to cost a heck of a lot more money than they thought they were saving.

Here's an interesting aspect: it's not just a symptom of crazy "safety" regulations, but also extreme (and understandable) paranoia about job security. At some point these flight attendants had been told not to give out water, and so, in this situation, rather than letting logic or human decency override a silly rule, they stuck to the letter of the law. Remember that every business in the country is eager to find excuses to fire people, thus reducing payroll without resorting to layoffs. And remember that loss of a job nowadays can quickly result in bankruptcy, loss of health care, etc., and in this economy can go on for quite a long time. Thus, although what the flight attendants did betrayed no common sense and seems petty, I can see why they did it. Hell, I might have done the same thing, hating myself meanwhile.

Good analysis

I think they're just stupid proles on a powertrip.

No, Awesomer is correct. They may be proles, but they're not stupid. We live in a plutocracy in which the owners and managers of corporations can do whatever they want, and the rest of us are scum. When your lords and masters issue an order, you'd better comply. The result of corporate control (fascism) is, among other things, dehumanization. I'm surprised the family didn't get locked up as terrorists.

It's Spirits Airlines policy to not serve individual sides of water unless it's accompanied by a double shot of single malt scotch.

a man identified as a doctor accompanying an obviously 7 month pregnant woman requests water for the woman and is refused by the airline and then ejected from the flight? regardless of the airline rules, that constitutes a clear violation of the intent of the latest FAA rules concerning the treatment of airline passengers excessively delayed on airplanes on the tarmac.

nothing posted so far by the airline representatives here refutes this in any way.

Plain and simple Spirit Airlines should be charged with criminal neglect.

I got held hostage for 3 hours on a Jet Blue flight. They broke out the Terra Blue Chips and water at hour 2. SWEET!

That's bullshit, policy my ass. Now if she dehydrated and fainted because of the cabin overheating, then what?

good to see the airline lobby hard at work posting comments on gothamist

Carry on enough food and water for your 7-months-pregnant self, your 2 kids & spouse in addition to whatever other stuff you're dragging with you? Don't be too quick to blame the victim here. Have any of the commenters ever tried to travel with all the gear you need to carry for a family?

Don't you guys know it's illegal to give out H20 on the plane! sheesh

This story has so many holes in it. Why run such an ill informed story.

So according to you guys, he asked for water, and was then asked to leave?

Even the title suggests the same.

Wow.

At first, I thought it was Danny Bonaduce from the picture.

+!

I thought it was Cynthia Nixon's girlfriend!

this is ridiculous. you can't bring your own food or drink on the plane, and you can't get food and drink unless the "corporate policy" says so.

As far as I'm concerned, the terrorists already won, and are laughing at us form their caves.

Actually you can bring your own food -- I never fly without having some power bars in my carry-on.

I'm sure Dr. Roslin was really polite about it, too. No one's ever rude to flight attendants.

with a name like "roslin" I can predict with 70% certainty that he must have acted like an utter entitled, condescending a-hole while demanding that water

this incident is like music to my ears.. extremely gratifying. I'm gonna go enjoy a pleasant evening now

You're an idiot.

WTF? My comment just got held and I doublechecked - it didn't have anything naughty!

if he were truly a responsible husband/doctor, he would have brought water on the plane to begin with. Or, hey, the pregnant wife could have taken some initiative and brought water.

duh. it's really that simple.

Welllll, bitch, after all these replies explaining why the man asked for water, don't you feel retarded now?

It's really that simple.

Duh.

You cannot bring more than around 3oz. of liquid onto a plane as per the TSA regulations.

Having been pregnant, I don't doubt for a minute that this woman cam prepared with snacks and water. At 7 months you're so thirsty all the time and you get so hungry you just want to sit down and cry.

Hmmm... first and only post...

Spirit Airlines PR hard at work...

duh right? they couldn't possibly have already brought their own water and drank it all in 2 hours right?

Maybe they did bring water on the plane but after two hours on the tarmac, they drank it all.

I always ask for water before the flight, bottled. Never been a problem.