United Airlines flight emergency lands after crew deems autistic daughter has a 'behavior issue'

A mother claims that a United Airlines flight emergency landed the plane on her family’s layover flight from Houston back home to Portland, Oregon, because of her autistic daughter.

Donna Beegle and her husband were traveling home from Disney World with their 15-year-old daughter Juliette and son when the incident occurred.

Beegle told ABC News the flight attendant deemed Juliette was being disruptive for refusing to eat a cold sandwich. "If her blood sugar lets go, she gets frustrated and antsy. We try to anticipate that and prevent that,” she said, stressing the importance of her daughter eating.

When the flight attendant refused to bring her something else, Beegle warned "I said, 'How about we wait for her to have a meltdown, she'll be crying and trying to scratch in frustration. I don't want her to get to that point.'"

So he brought her rice and jambalaya and that solved the problem, but about 25 minutes later the pilot came over the loudspeaker saying they were diverting the plane to Salt Lake City due to a passenger with a "behavior issue."

Paramedics and police then came on board and deemed there was not an issue, but the pilot then personally asked the family get removed from the flight.

Donna has since posted an account of what happened on Facebook and the company defended the actions of their crew in a statement.

"After working to accommodate Dr. Beegle and her daughter during the flight, the crew made the best decision for the safety and comfort of all of our customers and elected to divert to Salt Lake City after the situation became disruptive. We rebooked the customers on a different carrier and the flight continued to Portland,” the statement reads.

image via Facebook from Donna Beegle