Chinese-American mom says she was kicked off Spirit Airlines flight for breastfeeding

Netizens had never heard of Spirit, but will be sure to boycott

A story about a mother being kicked off a plane in Houston after breastfeeding her child has made it all the way over to the Chinese internet where netizens are vowing that the airline will feel their wrath.

Mei Rui is an accomplished concert pianist and cancer researcher. On Friday, she was headed from her home in Houston to New York City for a recording session as part of her cancer study. Accompanying her on her trip were her elderly Chinese parents and her two-year-old son.

Rui said that their Spirit Airlines flight which was to take off at 6:30 am ended up being delayed for several hours due to bad weather. When it finally appeared that they were almost ready to depart, Rui decided to breastfeed her child, worried that otherwise he wouldn’t stay quiet during the three-hour flight.

“Every parent with a young child can image, you don’t want to be that parent on the plane,” she told The Washington Post. “It would be very embarrassing. I was just trying to avoid that.”

According to Rui, the plane’s cabin doors were still open as she began breastfeeding. Soon, a flight attendant came up to her and told her that she would have to prepare her child for departure. Rui says that she asked for just a few more minutes to finish. “I said as soon as the plane’s door closes, I will put him in his seat,” she told local news station KHOU.

After conversing at the front of the plane, the flight attendants returned and ordered Rui to get off the plane. By that time, she had stopped breastfeeding her child, and had started recording the incident on her cellphone.

Rui says that she and her family were escorted off the plane and into the tunnel where police officers and other personnel were already waiting at the gate, blocking her from getting back on the plane.

In the cell phone footage, Rui can be seen asking one Spirit Airlines representative why they had been taken off the plane. “Because you were not compliant,” the man tells her, though he refuses to elaborate on what exactly she had done wrong.

“If this happened to your family,” Rui says, before being cut off. “It wouldn’t happen to my family, I can assure you,” the man replies.

In the aftermath of the incident, Spirit Airlines has stood by its decision to kick Rui and her family off the flight, sending this statement to KHOU:

Our records indicate a passenger was removed from Flight 712 after refusing to comply with crew instructions several times during taxi to runway and safety briefing. To protect the safety of our guests and crew, FAA regulations and airline policies require all passengers to stay seated and buckled during takeoff and landing. We apologize for any inconvenience to our guests. As a courtesy, we’ve issued a full refund to the passenger in question.

A spokesman for the ultra-low cost American carrier has also accused Rui of “repeatedly” failing to follow flight attendants’ instructions to buckle her son up, claiming that “multiple reports from the crew and other passengers nearby confirm the doors were closed when the incident happened.” The spokesman also alleged that police were only called when Rui tried to force her way back on board the plane.

Rui has said that Spirit is lying about the incident, offering her cell phone footage as proof for her side of the story. A Yale graduate with degrees in molecular biophysics and biochemistry and music, Rui moved to the US from China when she was 16 years old. She now works at a prominent cancer clinic in Houston.

She says that her elderly parents were both shaken by the incident. After arriving back home, her father collapsed and was rushed to the emergency room. Rui is currently living in temporary housing after Hurricane Harvey destroyed her home and many of her possessions, including her piano.

“It was humiliating to be chased off a plane in front of hundreds of people,” she told reporters. “We had never been through anything close to this.”

“We’re not lawbreakers or trouble seekers. We’re the elderly, a baby and his mother, why did they have to treat us this way?”

Rui has accepted the refund, but has said that she won’t be flying Spirit again.

Meanwhile, Rui’s story has been making waves on Chinese social media with netizens casting the incident as yet another case of harassment against Asians in the United States and calling on Asian Americans to speak up for their rights. Some have even said that they will do their part in this struggle.

“Spirit Airlines? This is the first time I have ever heard of this airline, but I promise never to fly with them!” wrote one Weibo user.

A rather larger campaign of viral outrage was sparked earlier this year when an Asian passenger was forcibly removed from his seat on a United Airlines flight by police officers. Afterward, many web users vowed to boycott United, charging the company with discrimination, claiming that the passenger had been selected to be dragged from the plane because he was Asian. Some even cut up their United membership cards and posted pictures onto social media.

Moreover, a #ChineseLivesMatter petition on the whitehouse.gov petitions page demanding a federal investigation into the incident gained over 200,000 signatures with the number continuing to rise even after it was discovered that the passenger was Vietnamese-American, not Chinese-American.