A Seattle woman claims that she was threatened by a Mesa Airlines flight attendant for trying to dispose of her daughter’s dirty diaper in a bathroom garbage bin.
Farah Naz Khan, a 34-year-old endocrinologist, told NBC News that she was on a Mesa Airlines flight from Montana to Houston Friday when the incident happened. Her husband and daughter, who is younger than 2, were with her.
Midway through the flight, Khan and her daughter went to the diaper changing station at the back of the plane, as there was none in the front. She then disposed of the dirty diaper in a scented disposal bag into a lavatory trash can. Khan said she did it the right way, having done it many times.
“When I walked back to the front holding my diaper wipes container and, like, the pad that we used to change my daughter’s diaper on, the flight attendant accosted me and said: ‘Did you just dispose of a diaper back there? That’s a biohazard’” Khan told NBC.
Though she tried to explain, Khan said the attendant continued to yell at her. She alleged that the attendant then asked her to retrieve the used diaper from the trash can, which she calls a humiliating and degrading experience.
A few hours after landing, she got a phone call from an unidentified 1-800 number. When she picked up her cellphone, Khan said, the flight attendant was on the line.
“I recognized the voice. He said, ‘Due to a biohazard incident on the plane today, we’ve placed you on the no-fly list.’ This made me very angry, because I suffered the humiliating experience. … They are placing me on a no-fly list?” Khan said. “I also didn’t dispose of the diaper on the plane, even if it was considered a biohazard. I walked it off the plane and threw it away myself outside the flight.”
Mesa Airlines contracts with United Airlines for some regional flights as part of the airline’s express network, a United spokesman told NBC. He referred questions about the incident to Mesa.
In a statement to NBC, a Mesa spokesperson said: “The details as described by our customer do not meet the high standards that Mesa sets for our flight attendants and we are reviewing the matter.”
