Two passengers were booted from a JetBlue flight at JFK Airport Thursday after an incident reportedly involving Ivanka Trump.
A man who identified himself as Matthew Lasner tweeted about the incident, but later took the tweets down.
Lasner claimed in the since-removed tweets that Trump and her family were on his flight out of Terminal 5 at Kennedy Airport. Lasner said his husband “expressed displeasure in a calm tone” but then JetBlue staff overheard and kicked the pair off the plane, according to the tweet. In an earlier tweet, however, Lasner said his husband chased them down “to harass them.”
JetBlue released a statement following the incident, saying the decision to remove a passenger is never taken lightly.
“If the crew determines that a customer is causing conflict on the aircraft, the customer will be asked to deplane, especially if the crew feels the situation runs the risk of escalation during flight,” the statement said. “In this instance, our team worked to re-accommodate the party on the next available flight.”
An airport official who asked not to be identified acknowledged Ivanka Trump was aboard the flight.
The Port Authority, whose police are responsible for law enforcement at metro-area airports, also issued a statement — saying that Port Authority police made no arrests.
Lasner has since deleted his Twitter account and a request for comment has not been returned. An associate professor named Matthew Lasner is listed, with the same Twitter handle, on a faculty page for the Urban Policy & Planning department at Hunter College. A representative for Hunter College did not respond to a request for comment.
Requests for comment from Ivanka Trump as well as President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team were not immediately returned.
– With Newsday
