United Airlines Made Infant 'Sit Dangerously' On Plane, Mother Claims

A woman alleged on Facebook that a United Airlines flight attendant put her infant daughter in a “dangerous position” before the flight was scheduled to take off from the Dallas International Airport, Sunday.

Cassie Hutchins, who is a dancer at Sacramento Kings Dancers, took to social media to share her not-so-pleasant experience of flying with United Airlines. In the post, she said her eight-month-old daughter was 18 pounds and in accordance with the rules, was below the recommended weight for forward-facing seats. So she made it a point to always put her in rear facing car seats on flights

She followed the same method on her flight to Denver on Friday and faced no problems regarding her choice. However, the flight on Sunday was different.

Hutchins said she had got her daughter to fall asleep on her separate seat and the flight was about to takeoff when a crew member came running from the gate on the plane and told her she “can’t have her rear-facing. I tell him that’s ridiculous because their other flight let us, and this is what is recommended by FAA (Federal Aviation Administration).”

“FAA says, ‘A CRS must be installed in a forward-facing aircraft seat, in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions. This includes placing the CRS in the appropriate forward- or aft-facing (rear-facing) directions as indicated on the label for the size of the child,’” she added.

The flight attendant also allegedly got another female crew member to come into the plane and vouch for his recommendations. The woman claimed the second attendant berated her for not following proper protocol to ensure the safety of her child.

“WHICH IS SO UNSAFE. You cannot put a rear-facing seat forward, it is not meant for facing forward, putting my child in a dangerous position,” she wrote.

When she was told the “plane could not leave” without her adjusting the child’s seat as per the attendant’s recommendations, Hutchins said she knew she had no other choice but to comply.

But since the seat was meant to be rear-facing, Hutchins struggled to make it forward-facing.

“So I face her forward, and I can’t even get the belt through the slots on her car seat because it should be rear-facing, and it’s facing the opposite way, so the belt wouldn’t fit through it. The woman had to extend it as far as she could, and it still didn’t have enough room to fit into the slots on her car seat. I had to have it in and out of the slot which once again, is unsafe,” she wrote.

Hutchins added when she asked the female attendant to inform her where it was written in the airlines’ policy her kid should sit forward-facing, the former said she failed to produce evidence.

“She comes back and says that she is supposed to rear-face, but the gate agents have final say in how the baby sits,” the woman stated.

Lastly Hutchins mentioned in the post she was in fear of her daughter getting hurt at the beginning stretch of the flight.

“We hit a huge patch of turbulence in the beginning of the flight, and I had to hold her head back because her head would throw forward with a big bump,” she wrote.

United Airlines said they were investigating the alleged incident and had refunded Hutchins’ daughter’s ticket.

“At United, our customers’ safety is our top priority. We have been in touch with the customer and have apologized for her experience. We are continuing to review this with the SkyWest staff to learn more about what happened,” the Airlines said in a statement to Fox News.