Continental Airlines says they kicked a teenager off a plane because she was coughing “uncontrollably.” The captain, the airline said, “felt he was acting in the best interest of the passenger and other passengers on the flight.”
Sixteen-year-old Rachel Collier made it to Honolulu a day later after being removed from an airplane as it was about to leave Newark, N.J.
“Everyone was looking at me,” Collier told AP. “I couldn’t talk because I lost my voice coughing so much. I was panicking.”
The flight attendants gave her water, and a doctor on the flight said she would be all right to make the 10-hour flight. But the captain returned the aircraft to the gate to drop off Collier and one of her teachers, Maile Kawamura.
“The captain said I had to get off the plane and I started crying,” Collier said.
The Kalani High School sophomore caught a cold during a school spring break trip to Washington, D.C., and New York. She fell asleep on the plane and woke up coughing and gasping for breath as it was about to take off, according to wire services.
This follows a report that coughing passengers on a Continental flight from Hong Kong were quarantined in Newark, where they were detained for several hours.
Report by David Wilkening
