Passengers Complained Of Smell, United Airlines Offers Apology

United Airlines offered its apology to a Columbus, OH family who said they were humiliated for eating fish onboard a flight Friday.

"As you can see, I wear these holy fringes. I wear a kepa. My son wears a kepa," Robert Blum said, according to WBNS-10. "And maybe that's what the steward saw. And I am sure it was. Because why did he single us out?"

The Blums were eating a kosher meal they purchased at a restaurant before boarding the United Airlines flight from Denver to Columbus, when a flight attendant asked the family to quit eating.

"He said, 'I don't want you eating that food on the plane,'" Blum said of a flight attendant, who told him passengers were complaining about the smell of the fish.

"He said, 'I don't want the food on the plane. If you don't trash the food, I'll trash you. You'll get off the plane, you and your wife and your kids,'" said Blum.

Blum said the pilot harassed him about the food as well.

"The pilot says to me, 'are you going to give us any more trouble because I have to worry about 220 passengers smelling your stinking food?'" Blum contended.

The confrontation created a scene on the plane forcing Blum to throw the food away when the pilot threatened to throw the family off the plane.

After begging to stay on board, food in the trash, his nine-year-old daughter starting crying as other passengers looked on.

"I was about to cry simply because of seeing my kids like that. It was terrible."

Blum calls the incident a classic case of discrimination.

"What can they do? They going to give me a free ticket to Hawaii? That won't take away the humiliation and pain of watching my children suffer and the embarrassment we all felt."

United Airlines apologized to the family, admitting flight crew acted inappropriately.

FMI: www.united.com