Passengers revolted and refused to fly after the crew of a U.S. Airways flight kicked a blind man and his dog off of the plane.
Albert Rizzi, a legally blind man, was thrown off the plane after his guide dog Doxy became "out of control," according to the crew on a flight fro Philadelphia to Long Island, NY, ABC reports.
Passengers said the move was uncalled for and believed that Rizzi was mistreated by the flight attendant during the incident on Wednesday.
As a result, other passengers decided not to fly in protest and they decided to take a bus to Long Island instead.
The flight attendant would not let the plane take off because Doxy was not fully under Rizzi's seat. The animal became restless after the plane had been waiting on the tarmac for 90 minutes.
"The lady comes back and gets very insistent, and I said, ''Look, I don't understand what you want me to do," Rizzi told ABC. "I said, 'He's as best as he can, he's where he needs to be.' And I hear nobody else moving, and as I'm walking to the front, I'm like wait a second, why am I the only one getting off?"
Rizzi took to Facebook to explain the situation, saying, "I cannot believe this. I was removed from the plane that I was supposed to be on to go home from Philadelphia because my dog couldn't sit in a spot for an hour and a half on the tarmac such a joke. So now I am in Philadelphia trying to figure out what I'm going to do to get home. I have never been so annoyed flying US Airways all year and this is the way the stewardess treatment!"
Rizzi wasn't alone. Several passengers stood up for him which resulted in the captain asking everyone on board to leave the plane.
"When we, the passengers, realized what was going on, we were, like, 'Why is this happening? He's not a problem. What is going on?'" Passenger Frank Ohlhorst told ABC. "And we all kind of raised our voices and said, 'This is a real problem.' The captain came out of the cockpit and he basically asked us all to leave the aircraft."
Some travelers took a bus to Long Island which arrived at 2:30 a.m. while others stayed in Philadelphia for the night.
U.S. Airways claims that Rizzi was verbally abusive. The incident is being investigated.
Rizzi says the passengers who stood by him were "remarkable."
"These people, all of them, got on a bus and drove 3 and a half hours from Philadelphia," he told ABC. "They could have stayed on the plane, but they chose not to. I'm so humbled."
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
