There is a long list a reasons why your next flight may be delayed, and a child refusing to buckle their seat belt could be one of them.
Latam flight 4049 was set to depart the Colombian city of Santa Marta to Bogotá, the capital, when the captain was forced to leave the runway and return to the gate after a young boy disobeyed the crew’s instructions.
The boy, according to witnesses, refused to remain seated and declined to buckle up, delaying the flight’s 8:20 am takeoff for an hour at Simón Bolivar International Airport.
In a video posted on social media, a frustrated passenger can be heard in the background shouting ‘remove him’ at the flight attendants while another person yelled ‘do something.’
The footage also showed a toddler, who appeared to have grown restless with the delay, in the aisle with an adult guardian as the flight staff tried to maintain order. That toddler was later seen being taken off the plane, with El Colombiano reporting that the child was the boy who refused to buckle his seat belt.
Airport personnel escort a young boy and his dad off a flight after the youngster refused to buckle his seat belt, causing an hour-long delay for other passengers
A member of the personnel at Simón Bolivar International Airport in Santa Marta, Colombia approaches the row where the father and his unruly son were sitting shortly before they deplaned
‘Dear passengers, we inform you that if the flight regulations are not complied with, we cannot start the flight. They were not complied with, we had to return,’ a flight attendant said over the speaker as the customers became agitated.
‘And now we are waiting for the passengers who did not comply with the regulations to please disembark. We cannot start the flight this way due to safety,’ she added.
The passengers reacted by shouting at the father and the boy to leave the aircraft.
An airport personnel member then walked inside the airplane and approached the father, who complied by carrying his son out of the aircraft.
A toddler grew restless during the airplane disturbance, which delayed takeoff by an hour
While some passengers backed the airline’s decision to remove the father and the boy, a woman could be heard in the background saying, ‘He has rights, it’s a child.’
DailyMail.com reached out to Latam for comment.
In May, a Frontier Airlines passenger forced an entire flight to deplane after she refused to comply with exit row instructions.
In March, a woman on board a Spirit Airlines flight suffered a meltdown before the aircraft was about to take off from Las Vegas and attempted to bite a passenger who was sitting next to her.
The frantic woman verbally abused cops and called them the n-word as they removed her from the plane after all passengers had deplaned.