DURHAM, N.C. (WTVD) -- A Durham woman is facing charges after a confrontation on a Frontier Airlines flight that landed her in jail. Frontier Airlines is standing by the flight attendant involved but Rosetta Swinney has a different story about what happened.
"What really hurt me is for my child to see me getting handcuffed and taken away from her," Swinney said. "Twelve hours I was in jail. Twelve hours." Swinney says she will never ride Frontier Airlines again after getting kicked off a plane on her way back from Las Vegas. She had been in Nevada for a wedding with her 14-year-old daughter for Easter weekend.
Swinney said boarding the flight back to RDU was already delayed so the staff could clean the plane. That's why she was surprised that the seat was still dirty when she boarded with her daughter. "She jumped up to say mom! My hands are wet. She smelled it. She says 'this is vomit, mom.' So we went to look. It was on the bag, all over her shirt, her hands," Swinney said.
That's when Swinney alerted a flight attendant. "I don't know if she got offensive about it. But she turned around to me and said, 'that's not my job.' If it wasn't her job. Why wasn't it attend to?" Swinney said.
Frontier Airlines said in a statement that "the flight attendants apologized and immediately invited the mother and her teenage daughter to move to either end of the plane so that the seat area could be cleaned." The statement also said that "the mother and daughter were...told that once boarding was complete they would be provided other seats if available."
Swinney, however, said the flight attendant never attempted to clean up the mess and did not reassign her seat. A woman who said she witnessed the exchange posted a similar account on Facebook, saying that the attendant said it wasn't her job to clean up the mess.
Swinney said she confronted the flight attendant again and that's when authorities were called to remove her and her daughter. "I felt humiliated," Swinney said. "I felt more bad that my child had to see me be handcuffed and taken away from her."
The 53-year-old woman was put in jail and her daughter was placed in child protective custody.
