In latest airline video, Delta boots family from flight

DALLAS (AP) — A California family says they were forced off a Delta plane and threatened with jail after refusing to give up one of their children's seats on a crowded flight.

A video of the April 23 incident was uploaded to YouTube on Wednesday and adds to the list of recent encounters on airlines that went viral, including the dragging of a passenger off a United Express plane.

Brian and Brittany Schear of Huntington Beach, Calif., told KABC-TV in Los Angeles they were returning from Hawaii with their two toddlers when they were removed from the plane.

On the video, Brian Schear can be heard talking with a person off-camera – it is not clear whether that person is a Delta employee, a security officer, or somebody else.

Schear explains he wants to put one of the toddlers in a seat originally purchased for his 18-year-old son. Schear says the older child had returned home on an earlier flight.

Delta policy generally prohibits passengers from using a ticket bought in another person's name. Federal regulations do not bar such a switch as long as the new passenger's name can be run through a data base, according to a Transportation Security Administration spokesman.

After Schear says the airline would have to remove him, the person off-camera replies, "You and your wife will be in jail ... it's a federal offense if you don't abide" by an airline crew's order.

"I bought that seat," Schear protests.

Schear then suggests that his wife could hold the toddler during takeoff and then put the youngster in the car seat. Another person, who appears to be a Delta supervisor, tells him federal rules require children under 2 must stay in a parent's lap throughout the flight.