The incident happened on a Southwest Airlines flight in Sacramento, California in 2021.
It is pertinent to mention that the airliner had introduced a “pick a seat” system where passengers are placed into separate “boarding groups” depending on their check-in time on a first-come-first-served basis instead of being allotted seats by the boarding staff.
The viral video of the incident showed the family members, branded “Karen and Karen 2.0” boarding a fully booked flight and yelling at co-passengers to move to other seats.
However, the commuters asked them to stop shouting as there were children on the plane. The daughter told a passenger that they are going to sit down and her mother would hold on to them and would cry and scream throughout the journey.
The flight attendants tried to get the matter sorted. An attendant said they could not ask the passengers to move.
The family member ignored the second flight attendant and kept searching for the seats when told they could be shifted to another flight to make them comfortable.
The flight attendants, after having enough of the mother and daughter’s behavior and feeling other passengers were at risk, called the airport staff and had them removed from the plane.
The whole flight clapped when the women were offloaded from the flight.