Monday, May 11, 2015

FEAR OF AUTISM-AUTISTIC CHILD & FAMILY THROWN OFF AIRPLANE BECAUSE THE PILOT FELT UNCOMFORTABLE


Last month I wrote a Blog article about a woman  being thrown off an airline flight with her family, because she has cancer ( CLICK HERE).

Today we are back to the same type of stupidity, ignorance, lack of compassion, absolutely no common sense, in a new incident of complete cluelessness by supposedly trained "professionals".

This is again about the way ignorant people who are in positions of authority abuse their self appointed importance and prey on others who deserve to be treated with humanity.

It is about stupid people, from the flight crew of a United Airline plane to the mickey mouse cops, paramedics who follow in blind stupidity, androids all of them, because they refuse to use their common sense to act as intelligent human beings.

Or perhaps, we simply have to accept the truth, that most people are morons, idiots, and couldn't care less about anyone else, especially those who need a tiny bit of understanding.

A video of the incident was recorded by a passenger & is shown below: 


Juliette Forbes is a 15-year-old sophomore at Tigard High School in Tigard, Oregon who has autism.

Juliette was diagnosed with autism just before she turned three.


Dr. Donna Beegle, a public speaker who focuses on poverty, told KATU news her family was traveling home from Disney World on Tuesday, May 5. 

She said her 15-year-old daughter, Juliette, is high functioning but doesn't speak. 

She and Juliette had previously traveled all over the world to her mother's speaking engagements without there ever having been a problem.

The family ate dinner during a flight layover in Houston but Juliette refused to eat. Beegle brought some snacks on board for her because "if her blood sugar lets go, she gets frustrated and antsy. We try to anticipate that and prevent that."

After the plane took off, Beegle knew Juliette was getting hungry, but Juliette wouldn't eat the snacks the family had on hand.

Juliette is a picky eater, Beegle said, a common trait of children who have autism.

Beegle thought hot food might appeal to her daughter. 

Her parents are good at anticipating their daughter's moods and asked the flight attendant if she had any hot meals
"Juliette refuses room temperature food," Beegle said. "I had no real way to bring hot snacks in my bag."

The attendant told her they had a hot sandwich, but the sandwich arrived cold, and Juliette refused to eat it.
"You know what? She didn’t eat her dinner,” Beegle said. “I know her, when she gets hungry or thirsty, she really struggles because she can’t tell us and she gets really frustrated.”
"I could see [Juliette] getting frustrated," Beegle said, adding that she then asked the flight attendant to check on meals available for purchase in first class.

I asked if I can purchase something hot for my daughter and [the first class flight attendant] said no". "I called him back over and I said to him, 'Please, help us out here,'" but he again refused.
"He came back again and I said, 'I have a child with special needs, I need to get her something." And he said, 'I can't do that,'" she explained. 

"I said, 'How about we wait for her to have a meltdown, she'll be crying and trying to scratch in frustration. I don't want her to get to that point.''
Finally after a 25-minute debate with the flight attendant, he then brought Juliette rice and jambalaya, Beegle said, and "she ate and she was fine."

It all should have ended at that point. In fact if the flight crew had a nano amount of common sense, they would have felt some compassion, understanding and given her the meal when the mother first offered to pay for it.

Instead this benign  situation turned into an escalation of events that unnecessarily forced  an emergency landing of the airplane.
About 30 minutes later, an announcement by the Captain over the loudspeaker said the plane was making an emergency landing in Salt Lake City, Utah, due to a passenger “in the back of the plane who has behavior issues.”At this time, Juliette was sitting calmly in her window seat watching a video.
Once the plane landed, paramedics came on board and asked the Beegle family if everything was fine and they answered yes.

Paramedics asked what was wrong when they found Juliette happily watching a video, Beegle said.

"The paramedic said this was an over-reactive flight attendant and started shaking his head, and said 'We have real work to do' and left," she said. 

"We were still baffled."

Police then came to their seats, Beegle said.

"They see this little teenager sitting there watching a video and they asked if there was an issue, and I said, 'No.'"

“They could see Juliette was sitting there watching her show,” Donna said.

According to police, the captain was not comfortable flying the plane to Portland with Juliette on board.

Police officers said 'We have to ask you to leave the plane,'" said Beegle. "I asked them 'Why?' and they said, 'The captain doesn't feel comfortable flying to Portland with your daughter on the flight.'"

"People were shouting, 'Leave her alone, let her go, there's no issue here,'" she added.

  • The teenager was calm and quiet as she and her family were escorted off of the plane during the emergency landing in Salt Lake City.

Amazingly, the Captain or co-pilot never checked to see if the situation had improved after her daughter had food.

    Photo below of the "dangerous" little Juliette who frightened the  Airline  Crew to make an emergency landing, she looks real scary, huh.....?


The family eventually took an alternate flight with Delta Airlines from Salt Lake City, Utah, to Portland, Oregon.

United Airlines spokeswoman Jennifer Dohm issued the following typical "cover their ass" statement, defending its decision to make an emergency landing:

"After working to accommodate Dr. Beegle and her daughter during the flight, the crew made the best decision for the safety and comfort of all of our customers and elected to divert to Salt Lake City after the situation became disruptive. We rebooked the customers on a different carrier and the flight continued to Portland."



This despite the fact that no one around the Oregon family felt threatened in any way. 

No apology, nothing about being sorry, not a word about how poorly this entire incident was handled by United Airlines, not a feeling of any remorse in their above bull shit, scripted, phony public relations press release.

Their actions defy any reasonable explanation, revealing the ignorance of their in flight personnel and their corporate disconnect from reality.

A passenger on the plane captured the incident on his cell phone and says it clearly shows that the family was not combative and that the autistic teen was sitting quietly with headphones when she was escorted from the plane. In the video, a passenger can be heard saying, “this is ridiculous” and another says that it will likely result in a “lawsuit.”


Their Airline crew screwed up big time, with poor decision making, stupid ass morons who inexplicably decided that this developmentally challenged little girl was a threat to the safety of the other passengers. 

Makes me wonder with such lousy judgement concerning the manner in which they mishandled this family, how do they actually safely fly their airplanes if it weren't for the computers that tell their pilots what to do. 

Donna has appropriately filed a complaint with United Airlines and the FAA.

She said that her family will be filing a discrimination lawsuit “so no one else has to go through this.” 

Her goal is to bring attention to the issue of autism and to make sure that airline employees have proper training to work with passengers that have special needs.

United Airlines used to have a famous slogan "fly the friendly skies of United".

United Airlines is certainly not friendly and clearly is the epitome of being very dimwitted.

Now we know why they ended that publicity campaign.