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BOSTON -- Two-year-old Natalie is adorable, but like all toddlers, she sometimes can be a handful.
When she threw a tantrum as her family boarded a recent JetBlue flight, her parents did their best to calm her down.
"Just some consideration, a little bit of humanity in the situation was really all I was looking for. Apparently, that doesn't exist," said Dr. Colette Vieau, Natalie's mother.
Vieau and her husband were trying to fly back to Boston from Turks and Caicos on February 18 with Natalie and her 3-year-old sister, Cecilia.
When Natalie refused to sit down, her parents eventually got her seat belt fastened and held her in place, but the Rhode Island famliy was kicked off the flight anyway.
"We were holding them down with all of our might, seat belt on. And I said, 'We have them seated. Can we go now?' She said the pilots made a decision to turn the plane around," Vieau said.
"We were holding them down with all of our might, seat belt on. And I said, 'We have them seated. Can we go now?' She said the pilots made a decision to turn the plane around," Natalie Vieau.
Apparently, the captain felt the flight couldn't safely take off with the family on board.
"Flight 850 ... had customers that did not comply with crewmember instructions for a prolonged time period. The Captain elected to remove the customers involved for the safety of all customers and crewmembers on board," the airline said in a statement.
"We did what we were asked to do. We weren't belligerent, drunk, angry or screaming. We were just having a hard time struggling with our children," Vieau said.
With no other flights that night, the family was stranded.
After finding a hotel and rebooking their flights, they were out another $2,000.
"I don't know that I could blame JetBlue, to be totally fair. I just feel like it's airplane travel today in general. I was certainly upset by the way this flight attendant handled the situation. As a result, yeah, I would probably try to avoid JetBlue in the future," Vieau said.
Vieau also offered to hold her daughter on her lap to calm her down, but federal regulations forbid that if a child is over 2, and Natalie just had her second birthday.
JetBlue said it's also a federal regulation that the captain gets to make the final call.
