It was supposed to be a regular flight for Ryan DeMarre as he was going to fly from Seattle to Maui earlier this month. However, the travel turned out to be a bad experience for him and his minor daughter. Booked to travel on Hawaiian Airlines Flight 29, DeMarre was kicked off the flight without further explanation by the crew. They only said that his ticket was invalid. The situation was caught on video and shared on TikTok. The video has gone viral and reached over 4 million views.
The video shows De Marre walking through the plane to the door and exiting the flight. Then at the gate, he tries to understand what happened and the cause of his removal. “Are we making this flight?.” he asked one of the crew members. “No, your ticket is invalid. It’s not even valid,” the employee answered. He wrote: “How do we get through TSA and on a plane with an invalid ticket and a minor?”
In another video, the passenger said he purchased the tickets using his Hawaiian Visa card on the airline’s website in March. DeMarre said that his minor daughter was not asked to leave the flight, although he was kicked off the flight. However, he decided to take her with him. After the incident, he went to Delta’s ticket counter and purchased an additional round-trip ticket to Maui for that same day. The ticket cost $2,000 for himself and his daughter.
As for his luggage, DeMarre was told, “They’ll be in Maui when you get there.”
Finally, in the third and last video, De Marre said: “Hawaiian Airlines called me up. They sincerely apologized for the way everything went down. They admitted they made a couple of mistakes which caused the whole situation.”
Hawaiian Airlines refunded all DeMarre’s expenses, including a complete round-trip, the $2,000 Delta ticket and the Uber ride he had to take to meet his family in Maui. He said that he was happy with the outcome.
The Tiktok video has received hundreds of thousands of comments. Many of them said that Hawaiian Airlines only apologized and refunded the passenger because his video went viral:
“They apologized because it went viral.”
“2,000,000 views I’m sure they did call you.”
“Somebody messed up bad. Did you see anyone get on and take those seats after you got off?”
