'they were unruly' : bali airport denies removal of jetstar passengers on the basis of religion

Bali's International Ngurah Rai Airport officials have confirmed that the group of Australian passengers removed from a Melbourne Bound Jetstar flight on Sunday was not on the basis of what religion they belonged to.

We want to convey that the removal of a number of passengers from [the Jetstar plane] was purely because of security and flight safety reasons related to unruly passengers and had nothing to do with SARA [tribal affiliations, religion, race and societal groups] issues," airport spokesman Arie Ahsanurrohim said in a statement on Wednesday. 

He further explained that the incident happened when Jetstar flight JQ-36 was ready to take off and Cabin crew was requesting the passengers to follow instructions and get back to their seats to put on seat belts. "Two passengers did not heed the cabin crew's instructions," he said. 

One of those passenger was complaining about monitor of in-flight entertainment not being functional. Cabin Crew requested the passenger to wait until the flight takes off so they can look into the issue after that however both passengers refused to cooperate and kept standing.

"After the warnings were not heeded by the aforementioned passengers, the cabin crew reported the incident to the pilot [...] who decided that the two passengers should be removed from the plane because they would not listen to the flight safety instructions from the cabin crew," Arie said. The remaining 19 passengers were protesting the removal of those two passengers which was causing hindrance in the operations and thus they were removed as well.

The incident involved a group of family members along with a newly married couple who traveled to Bali for a destination wedding. The newly wed Sarah Aslan accused Bali Airport and Jetstar that they were treated this way and attacked because of their "Ethnic look and being Muslim" in an interview to Australia's channel 9.

Jetstar also issued a statement denying these accusations and their staff's behaviour.

"The safety of our customers and crew is our number one priority and we do not tolerate any kind of disruptive or abusive behavior," an airline spokesperson said, as quoted by 9news.com.au. (kmt)