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Four Black teenagers were removed from an Allegiant Air flight on Monday night for allegedly refusing to wear their face masks correctly.
The flight crew had the 16 and 17-year-olds, who are players on a youth basketball team, taken off the plane at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport in Arizona. It was due to fly to Stockton, south of Sacramento.
Police escorted the teenagers off the aircraft and two other players who were traveling in the same group left the plane voluntarily.
The group's mentor reportedly accused staff of racial profiling while the teenagers said they were only asked once to fix their masks—which they say they did—before an attendant ordered them to be removed from the plane.
Hilarie Grey, a spokeswoman for Allegiant Air, issued a statement to the Sacramento Bee saying the boys had refused to comply with several requests that they wear their face coverings over the nose and mouth.
"Following repeated refusals to comply on board the aircraft, the party was deplaned from the flight," she said.
"The passengers in this party failed to sustain compliance with repeated crew member requests to wear face coverings properly (over their nose and mouth).
"Flight crew members were met with belligerent, dismissive comments. Allegiant does not discriminate based on race, gender, ethnicity, national origin or sexual orientation.
"A decision to deplane passengers is never made lightly but is determined in accordance with regulations, and in the interest of ensuring the safety of all passengers and crew throughout the duration of the flight."
However, the teenagers denied any wrongdoing and said they had complied with requests from the crew.
David Schuhmeier, one of the four kicked off the flight, told KCRA: "When the police came onto the plane, that was really scary and traumatizing because, with everything that's going on in the world, I didn't know if I could have been killed, arrested, Tased. I didn't know what was going to happen."
The 16-year-old, who filmed the incident, added: "It was just very traumatizing because I didn't even know what we even did. I didn't believe what they said we did was that severe they needed four police officers to escort us off the plane."
Brian Buchanan Jr., another of the teens, said: "When we were told to get off the plane, there was a, 'What did we do wrong?' Because we are young teenagers so we're trying to figure out what happened, what we did wrong, because honestly, we were scared."
The 17-year-old added: "Why were we getting kicked off a plane somewhere we don't even know? This is Arizona, we're not from here so we don't know what to do after."
The teenagers' mentor, Berry Accius, told the Sacramento Bee the boys, who were in Arizona for a basketball tournament, had been the victims of "racial profiling."
Newsweek has contacted Allegiant Air and Accius for further comment.
Last October, a passenger wearing a Donald Trump-branded hat and mask was offloaded from a Southwest flight after the airline said he refused multiple requests to put on the face covering properly.
In a statement, the carrier said the man, who was on a Tampa-Dallas plane, was put on a later flight after providing assurances that he would comply with the mask policy.
