A passenger was removed from a Kulula flight earlier this week, leaving the internet divided over whether or not her removal was justified.

News24 reports that in a statement, police said that they had been called to remove the passenger after she became physically and verbally abusive towards the captain and cabin crew, when the flight was delayed due to weather conditions.

Now new footage and eye-witness accounts are contradicting the airline’s claims.

Fellow passenger Sanele Gumede said the flight bound for Johannesburg was scheduled to depart at 21:55 on Friday, but the aircraft only left after 03:00 on Saturday.

…”One passenger was upset, she went and confronted the captain!” Gumede told News24. “He [the captain] got irritated and announced that he wants her to be escorted out immediately, everyone was like ‘hell no’!” he said.

I’m just going to put this out there: If the pilot says that weather conditions make it impossible to fly the plane do you:

• A: Take the word of an expert seriously and wait for conditions to become favourable thereby surviving the flight, or,
• B: Get angry and insist that the flight takes off even if it means possible death.

You can watch the altercation between the passenger and police here:

The footage below shows passengers coming to the defence of the allegedly “unruly” passenger when police tried to remove her.

“Just leave her alone,” one passenger can be heard shouting. “She’s a customer, she has all the rights to complain,” another says. Gumede said the saga lasted more than two hours before they were told that the flight had been cancelled.

“After the entire drama that lasted about two hours and 20 minutes, the captain announced on the intercom that: ‘This flight has been cancelled,'” he said.

Take a look:

You can see the passenger who was removed explaining her side of things to other passengers here (link to a video on Facebook that we cannot embed) and below:

#VIDEO: South African passengers take on kulula crew & police in defense of an unruly woman being ejected off flight. Here’s what happened. https://t.co/WA7RttsI42 pic.twitter.com/QSWMqObXd9

— Indian Spice (@spiceofi) January 21, 2019

Kulula said that the captain felt that the safety of passengers and crew were compromised, so he cancelled the flight.

“Once all the customers had disembarked and the unruly customer was escorted away from the group by the police, the captain again assessed the situation. “He decided it was safe to operate the service. The customers boarded the aircraft and the flight took off,” Kulula added.

The flight eventually landed in Jozi at 4:20AM on Saturday.

[source:news24]