Vomit in airline seat leads to woman’s arrest at Las Vegas airport

Frontier Airlines disputed a woman’s claims about the circumstances of her being kicked off a flight and taken into custody at McCarran International Airport this week.

In Facebook videos posted Saturday, a woman is seen arguing with airline staff about what she said was vomit on her daughter’s seat. In another video, she’s seen talking to police, who are telling her to leave the flight.

The last video shows the woman in handcuffs off the plane and at the gate inside the airport terminal, yelling “they going to try to arrest me because they have throw-up on the plane?” Also in the video is a crying girl, whom the handcuffed woman says is her 14-year-old daughter.

The Facebook user who posted the videos wrote that there was vomit on a seat from a prior flight, which got on the girl’s backpack and hands. She also wrote that a flight attendant “refused to clean up the vomit because ‘it’s not her job’ and instead handed the passenger a Clorox wipe to clean it up herself.”

“They won’t let her move her seat,” the woman filming the videos is heard saying in one clip.

According to the Facebook post, the flight attendant called security officers, who asked the woman to leave the flight. When she refused, security called the Metropolitan Police Department, who had everyone deplane after the woman again refused to leave.

The woman who was handcuffed was identified as Rosetta Swinney in news reports. In an interview with a North Carolina TV station, Swinney said the flight attendant did not clean up the mess or reassign her seat.

In a Wednesday night statement emailed to the Review-Journal, Frontier Airlines said flight attendants “apologized and immediately invited the mother and her teenage daughter to move to either end of the plane” after the vomit was found.

The flight from Las Vegas was heading to the Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Carolina, the airline said.

“The mother and daughter were also told that once boarding was complete they would be provided other seats if available,” the airline said. “The daughter was also offered cleaning products for herself and invited to use the lavatory to wash up.”

The airline said the woman was “unsatisfied with the response and became disruptive,” which prompted flight attendants to attempt to remove the two from the flight.

“The mother refused, and following procedure, law enforcement was called,” the airline said, noting later in the statement that “we apologized to our passengers for the inconvenience caused by the departure delay. The safety of passengers and crew is our top priority at Frontier.”

Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0240. Follow @k_newberg on Twitter.