A 19-year-old Australian athlete was stranded in Abu Dhabi after her Etihad flight was overbooked. She claims she was harassed, suffered a panic attack, and was ultimately forced to share her seat with a toddler for the remaining six hours of the flight.
An Australian teenager says she was harassed, had a panic attack, and was forced to sit with a stranger’s child on her lap for six hours when she was bumped from an overbooked Etihad flight. Lily Winward, 19, was returning from the trip of a lifetime after visiting Europe to compete in an Austrian athletics competition.
The Ulladulla teenager was flying back to Sydney from Athens in September when she was pulled aside by airline staff during her Abu Dhabi layover and told she wouldn’t be continuing to Australia.Winward, who was travelling alone, was told by Etihad staff that her flight home was overbooked and that she would be put up in a hotel 40 minutes from the airport for the night. Travelling in activewear tights and a singlet and without a change of clothes, Winward said she became distressed at the prospect of not being able to cover up when leaving the airport. She said that was when another passenger who had also been bumped from the flight began harassing her and trying to force her into a taxi with him. She told airline staff, who she claims didn’t seem to care about her distress. “I was quite upset. I was crying, and I said, ‘I just want to get home; I don’t feel safe going to a hotel, especially with this guy bothering me’.” Her distress turned into a panic attack. Finally, a staff member recognised the state she was in and was able to squeeze her back onto the original flight.However, Winward was given a seat meant for a woman’s toddler and ended up having to hold the child on her lap for much of the flight. “I just think it’s not good enough, for someone who has paid $3000 for flights, it shouldn’t happen.”The incident is again raising questions regarding the treatment of young female travellers by Middle Eastern airlines. In 2020, more than a dozen women were forced off a Qatar Airways plane in Doha and forced to undergo an invasive search and exam when an abandoned baby was found in the airport bathroo
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