Cake on a plane. Entitled Negros disrupting everyone’s trips. Everyone deplaned. Threat of lawsuit.
This story has it all, including crying Niglets.
Mercy, Lawd. Mercy!
A family claim they were kicked off a JetBlue plane because the birthday cake was deemed a ‘security risk’.
Cameron Burke, his wife and two children were flying to Las Vegas from JFK on May 3 to celebrate his wife’s 40th birthday – and they brought a buttercream cake with them.
But after they say they received conflicting advice about where they could store it a disagreement developed and they were ordered off the flight.
The airline claims the family stored it in areas that were ‘improper’ – an overhead bin for safety equipment – and refused to move it. But the family say they followed all the cabin crew’s instructions.
Even after Port Authority officers called to the scene deemed ‘no wrongdoing’ on the part of the family, as see in a video obtained by ABC 7 NY, airline staff nonetheless forced them to exit the plane.
The Burkes had boarded a Jet Blue flight out of Kennedy Airport and stored their buttercream cake in the overhead bin before taking their seats in the last row.
‘A flight attendant nicely asked me to remove the cake from that compartment, so I moved it to another one,’ Cameron told the New York Daily News.
‘She then asked me to move it to underneath the seat in front of me, I did.’
Then, chaos unfurled.
According to Cameron, another flight attendant appeared and confronted her colleague and then Cameron.
‘You know, you could see the gestures – then she was pointing to her, did you tell him he couldn’t put anything in the overhead compartment?
‘I had approached them, and I said everything was fine, and she said, ‘sir, this does not involve you. When she told me I had been non-compliant, then I said ‘ma’am, had you been drinking?’ because her behavior was not normal”
When another airline employee asked Cameron and his family to leave, he refused and began recording.
Video, obtained by ABC 7 NY reporter CeFaan Kim, showed Port Authority officers questioning the family as the Burkes tell them the cake is on the floor as flight attendants has requested.
Their seven-year-old son, Cameron Jr, and nine-year-old daughter, Camille, appear scared as the officers question the family.
‘I just want to know why,’ Cameron’s wife, Minta, says out loud. ‘Exactly!’ he replies. ‘For a cake?’
One of the officers then tells an airline employee that he sees ‘no wrongdoing’ on the part of the Burkes.
Airline staff then had all passengers on the full flight exit the plane in order to remove the Burke family.
The family’s tickets and reward points were refunded. Their luggage went to Las Vegas, and was collected by his mother-in-law.
According to JetBlue, the Burkes are at fault for the disruption.
The company says the cake was originally stored in an overhead bin with safety equipment, not meant for passenger carry-on and that the family ‘refused several requests to move the dessert’.
The customers became agitated, cursed and yelled at the crew, and made false accusations about a crew member’s fitness to fly,’ said JetBlue spokesman Doug McGraw.
‘After the customers refused to speak with a team leader about the situation, the Port Authority Police Department was called and the entire aircraft deplaned.’
Cameron says he was able to book a United Airlines flight out of Newark for Las Vegas the following day. He has since reached out to the National Action Network, and intends to file a lawsuit against JetBlue.
‘I want the flight attendant fired, she has no business serving the public,’ said Cameron
The comments I read at the Daily Mail must have been written by “racists” because the Burke family are roundly viewed as either idiots or clever scammers looking for a settlement in exchange for dropping their lawsuit.
