From left to right: Nasser Beydoun, Nabih Ayad, Dr. Hoda Amine and Nadia Majed.

DEARBORN – A local college student filed a complaint with the Michigan Department of Civil Rights after she and her mother were booted off a Spirit Airlines plane by a flight attendant who disregarded her medical needs.

Nadia Majed, 20, a student at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, said she was flying from San Diego back to Detroit on March 5, when the airline disregarded her request for a window seat due to her anxiety disorder.

On Thursday, March 10, the Arab-American Civil Rights League (ACRL) held a press conference to announce the complaint against Spirit Airlines for their handling of Majed’s inquiry.

Majed was on the plane with her mother, Dr. Hoda Amine, a well-known clinical social worker in the community. Prior to boarding the plane, they made a request for Majed to be seated near a window due to her claustrophobia.

However, upon entering the plane, Majed discovered that she wasn’t assigned to a window seat. A flight attendant, who communicated with Majed numerous times, grew increasingly agitated with her persistent requests to get her seat changed.

The flight attendant said her inquiry would be handled after the plane took off. However, Majed was already beginning to suffer a panic attack. She broke out in hives and demanded her request be addressed sooner.

Majed and her mother had noticed an empty window seat and asked for her to be switched.

That same flight attendant grew increasingly hostile with her and a confrontation ensued. Moments later, the flight attendant demanded both Majed and her mother be removed from the plane.

When Amine went to speak to the pilot of the plane about keeping them on the flight, he said he had to support the decision of his crewmembers to have them removed.

 “As I was being escorted off the plane, people were staring,” Majed said. “There were people wooing, clapping and some people were in shock. I was already triggered and crying and had broken out in hives. I was trying to hold back my hyperventilating.”

The complaint is requesting that Spirit Airlines address the incident, as well as issue an apology to Majed and her mother. The family is also asking for more sensitive training for its employees.

 “This woman, she did not care at all,” Majed said. “Usually a stewardess is supposed to calm you down and accommodate you to what makes you feel better when you are flying. I felt like she was not trained well…her attitude… its not the way you talk to someone.”

Majed said when she had made similar requests on a Delta flight; a flight attendant assisted her and checked on her numerous times throughout the flight.

Amine said the treatment she and her daughter underwent on the flight was humiliating. She said they begged the flight attendant to cooperate because she had to get back to Detroit immediately for scheduled appointments with patients, but the flight attendant still wouldn’t comply.

“I kept asking her, ‘please we have no place to go,’” Amine said. “She couldn’t care less. She just wanted her out. We suffered not only monetarily, but we suffered emotionally… It is so unfair.”

ACRL Chairman Nasser Beydoun said he believes the family was treated poorly because of their ethnicity. He said the ACRL has received a surge of complaints from Arabs and Muslims regarding their treatment on airlines.

He blamed the surge of complaints on the hate rhetoric being led by Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump.

“We at the ACRL has seen a rising incident level of people being subjected to humiliation, discrimination and racism,” Beydoun said. “Trump can get away with it, but companies and government agencies are not going to get away with it.”

Beydoun added that favorability of Muslims and Arabs in the U.S. are at an all-time low and it’s transparent in the number of complaints they’ve been receiving in recent months.

“There’s much more discrimination and Islamophobia going on today than there was after the attacks of 9/11,” Beydoun said. “This guy [Trump] is ignorant to the point of stupid. But his audience is drinking his Kool-Aid. But we aren’t going to tolerate it and we are going to fight back and defend the rights of this community.”

ACRL founder Nabih Ayad said Arab and Muslim communities are being marginalized on a daily basis. He also said the organization had filed a class action lawsuit regarding the so-called “No Fly List” that includes Muslim and Arab Americans who are hassled by security and gate agents at airports.

“We are under attack as a community and we will not allow this to continue to happen,” Ayad said. “The experience that Dr. Amine and her daughter underwent is very unfortunate. We truly feel at the ACRL that it’s not just because they are trying to control the tenants in the plane, but more so its about the person’s background and culture. The fact that they were Arab Americans, I think, played a major role in her decision to continue to not hear her cries for help.”

The ACRL is calling upon the Michigan Department of Civil Rights to address the complaint and to hold Spirit, the flight attendant and the pilot of the plane accountable for their actions. The organization is asking the department to look into a possible policy change with the airlines. 

“We aren’t looking for monetary damages in that sense; we are looking to make a wrong right,” Ayad said. “We are looking to neutralize what’s been going on in this nation. We are more concerned about not having this incident happen again to any individuals in the community.”