Ellen Fleming is a 71 year-old grandmother who has done tons of flying during her life, as she loves to travel. Since she’s flown so many times, she was stunned when something happened during a recent Air Canada flight to New Brunswick from British Columbia that had never happened before.

Ellen was sitting in coach with her husband and grandchildren when she asked the flight attendant for a simple favor. Now, Ellen is saying that the way the flight attendant responded left her humiliated and physically injured.

It all started when Ellen asked a flight attendant to throw away garbage from inside the seatback in front of her. The grandmother was stunned by the way he responded.

“He hauled himself up to his full height and said, ‘I’m a flight attendant and I don’t look after garbage…’ He swiped my arm away and the garbage flew all over us. With my foot, I scraped it off, away from my feet,” she said.

The flight attendant was so forceful with her that Ellen was left with bruises on her arm. Though she was stunned by this, she decided to let it go and told herself that the flight attendant must have been having a bad day.

However, minutes later, the pilot came over the intercom and said that they had to turn around because of an unruly passenger. Ellen could not believe what was happening!

Ellen was forcibly removed from the flight along with her family as soon as they landed. The airline has since issued a statement defending the actions of their flight attendant.

“[Ellen] exhibited aggressive behavior toward a crewmember; threw garbage on the food trolley; kicked a crewmember when requested to wait until the member could come back and pick up the garbage as he was serving food,” the airline said.

Helen Hollett, a passenger who was sitting across from Ellen, disagreed with this completely, saying the interaction was not aggressive at all.

“The thing is most of the passengers on that plane didn’t even know what was happening,” Helen said.

Though police were called to the scene, they concluded that nothing criminal had taken place. Ellen has since gone public with her story, and you can find out more about it in the video below.