Passenger: I Was Kicked Off Flight at PHL for My Tweets
Philyflight760. Still grounded as authorities board plane for pilot sobriety test pic.twitter.com/8qOU6UaYqB
— Drinkwater Marketing (@DWPmarketing) October 8, 2014
All Lisa Carter-Knight wanted to do was fly back to Boston. But the mother of three and “creator of the original Cocktail Competition” (per her Twitter profile) had to wait: Her flight was delayed Tuesday night. Carter-Knight tweeted the delay happened after the pilot accused passengers of accusing him of being drunk.
#JetBlue Major debacle on flight 760 in Philly- pilot accuses passengers of accusing him of being intoxicated demands all passengers back
— Drinkwater Marketing (@DWPmarketing) October 8, 2014
She later tweeted no passengers actually accused the pilot of this, and updated with a photo of the plane “grounded as authorities board plane for pilot sobriety test.”
You can guess what happened next.
Jet Blue just denied me to board the aircraft due to my social media coverage of tonight's events. The pilot and staff denied service to me.
— Drinkwater Marketing (@DWPmarketing) October 8, 2014
Action News reports the pilot misinterpreted a passenger’s joke and believed he was being accused of drunkenness.
“We had been waiting an hour, so there was a joke by another passenger, that it’d been a long night and he hoped there was a fully-stocked bar on the airplane,” Carter-Knight told the station at 1 a.m. “And the pilot immediately ran out and said, ‘That’s it, everybody back up at the gate. I’ve been accused of being intoxicated.’”
According to Carter-Knight, the pilot said he was mandated to take a sobriety test because of the passenger’s joke. (Good thing that passenger wasn’t saying “Hi” to his friend Jack!) After passing it, the plane finally boarded. But Carter-Knight couldn’t get on.
Jet Blue denied me access tonight to a flight home to my three children.Thanks for supporting single working mothers.#philyjetblue760
— Drinkwater Marketing (@DWPmarketing) October 8, 2014
What’s weird is Carter-Knight’s tweets weren’t all that negative, really: She was mainly commenting on what a strange situation it was. She was stuck in Philadelphia overnight. JetBlue declined comment, but said it would issue a statement later Wednesday.
[6 ABC]
