Charges dropped against Durham woman arrested on Frontier flight after complaining about vomit in seat

DURHAM, N.C. (WTVD) -- Misdemeanor trespassing charges against a Durham woman, who was kicked off a Frontier Airlines plane after complaining about vomit on her seat, have been dropped.

Frontier Airlines is standing by the flight attendant involved but Rosetta Swinney has a different story about what happened.

"What really hurt me is for my child to see me getting handcuffed and taken away from her," Swinney said. "Twelve hours I was in jail. Twelve hours."

Swinney says she will never ride Frontier Airlines again after getting kicked off a plane on her way back from Las Vegas.

She had been in Nevada for a wedding with her 14-year-old daughter for Easter weekend.

Swinney said boarding the flight back to RDU was already delayed so the staff could clean the plane.

That's why she was surprised that the seat was still dirty when she boarded with her daughter.

"She jumped up to say mom! My hands are wet. She smelled it. She says 'this is vomit, mom.' So we went to look. It was on the bag, all over her shirt, her hands," Swinney said.

That's when Swinney alerted a flight attendant.

"I don't know if she got offensive about it. But she turned around to me and said, 'that's not my job.' If it wasn't her job. Why wasn't it attend to?" Swinney said.

Frontier Airlines said in a statement that "the flight attendants apologized and immediately invited the mother and her teenage daughter to move to either end of the plane so that the seat area could be cleaned."

The statement also said that "the mother and daughter were...told that once boarding was complete they would be provided other seats if available."

Swinney, however, said the flight attendant never attempted to clean up the mess and did not reassign her seat.

A woman who said she witnessed the exchange posted a similar account on Facebook, saying that the attendant said it wasn't her job to clean up the mess.

Swinney said she confronted the flight attendant again and that's when authorities were called to remove her and her daughter.

"I felt humiliated," Swinney said. "I felt more bad that my child had to see me be handcuffed and taken away from her."

The 53-year-old woman was put in jail and her daughter was placed in child protective custody.

After getting out of jail, Swinney said she bought a $1,000 flight home through Delta.

Frontier refunded the cost of her original flight home. But Rosetta said that's not good enough. She had hired a civil rights attorney to fight her misdemeanor trespassing charge.

Read the full statement from Frontier Airlines below:

"During boarding of flight 2066 from McCarran International Airport (LAS) to Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU) last week, two passengers told the flight attendants that vomit was present in their seat area. The flight attendants apologized and immediately invited the mother and her teenage daughter to move to either end of the plane so that the seat area could be cleaned. The mother and daughter were also told that once boarding was complete they would be provided other seats if available. The daughter was also offered cleaning products and invited to use the lavatory to wash up. The mother was unsatisfied with the response and became disruptive. As a result, the flight attendants determined that the mother and daughter should be deplaned and accommodated on another flight. The mother refused, and following procedure, law enforcement was called. Law enforcement then requested that everyone deplane so that the mother and daughter could be removed allowing the aircraft to be re-boarded and depart. We apologized to our passengers for the inconvenience caused by the departure delay. The safety of passengers and crew is our top priority at Frontier."

This story was originally published on April 24, 2019.