Jen Selter, an Instagram fitness model who boasts over 11.7 million followers, had been sitting in a plane on a tarmac for more than 90 minutes when she stood from her seat to stretch.
The American Airlines flight, bound for New York City from Miami, was delayed for more than two hours due to mechanical issues and the 24-year-old didn’t think it would be an issue to stretch her legs and put her jacket away in the overhead luggage compartment.
At the same time she was standing, two other passengers had just walked to the plane’s restroom.
But as soon as she stood, a flight attendant told her to sit back down. The pair began arguing and soon, Jen was being dragged off the plane by five policemen.
When the attendant told her to sit down, Jen said she told him to “relax”.
“The plane wasn’t taking off. I told him to relax,” Jen told The New York Post.
“But he had something against me. He was so nasty.
“It was humiliating. They made me feel like a terrible person, and I did nothing wrong.”
According to Jen, she was then asked if she wanted to be kicked off the plane, to which she sarcastically replied "yeah".
The attendant then spoke to the pilot, who called five policemen onto the plane to escort Jen, and her sister who she was travelling with, off the flight.
In a series of videos posted on Jen's official Twitter account, fellow passengers can be heard arguing with the American Airlines crew as they attempted to remove the Instagram star from the plane.
"You're harassing her," a fellow passenger tells the airline crew.
"Why are you being aggressive? You're trying to kick her out because she's standing? I don't understand this."
In anther video, Jen can be seen crying as police officers tell her "American Airlines calls the shots".
"They don't want you to fly on their plane today," one officer says.
In another video, a fellow passenger tells Jen and her sister she voluntarily left the flight after seeing how the situation was handled.
"She was just standing after two hours, we'd been waiting for two hours," the woman says.
"She was just standing... and then one of the crew members came and starting shouting at her, harassing her... it was really bad."
Jen used an existing ticket to fly American Airlines to New York the next morning, but the Instagram model says she will never use the airline again.
"I've seen cops come onto flights. But they shouldn't kick people off unless something is actually dangerous," she told The New York Post.
A representative for the airline said the Instagram star was asked to leave the aircraft after a "disagreement" with crew.
"American offered her hotel accommodations and transportation, which she declined," the spokesperson said.
Jen argues that she was never offered any help from the airline once she was escorted from the aircraft.
Listen to the latest episode of Mamamia Out Loud:
Top Comments
Sigh. The staff ask you to sit, you sit. You’re not the boss of them because you classify yourself as a ‘star’. Refuse to comply, answer back and get all high-and-mighty and you deserve to be kicked off.
This is an obvious attention grab - let’s all look the other way and not feed her ego any further.
> The pair began arguing
So basically the flight attendant asked her to do something, she refused, began argument and got kicked off. Open and shut.