The child whose refusal to buckle up prompted the cancellation of a Porter Airlines flight last week was “obviously terrified” and should not be blamed, says a passenger who was on the plane bound for Toronto. The aircraft could not take off from Victoria, B.C., in what Porter called an unsafe situation, so the crew decided to return to the terminal and have the child and a parent get off the plane. By the time they deboarded, it was too late for the flight to proceed. Passenger Aryeh Kozuch said he has taken the red-eye flight a dozen times without issue, but as he was closing his eyes in preparation for takeoff last Thursday, he noticed flight attendants walking toward the back of the plane. Then, he heard an overhead announcement reminding passengers that obeying flight attendants’ instructions is required by law. Five minutes later, there was another announcement: Passengers needed to comply with flight attendants’ instructions within 60 seconds, or the plane was going back to the gate. “At this point, it’s like, ‘Oh, something is wrong,’” said Kozuch, a 26-year-old from Toronto who was set to take off for a six-month stretch of sailing competitions around the world. He said a flight attendant attempted to quell passengers’ frustration by telling travellers that the source of the delay was a young child squirming and sliding down under the seat in front of them, refusing to be buckled in. “I’m not gonna lie, I never even considered the idea that it was gonna be an unruly toddler,” he said. “I thought it was an unruly adult.” The toddler and their parent soon deboarded, with luggage and a stroller in tow, but Kozuch worried the crew wouldn’t be able to organize another journey as the clock ticked past midnight. Porter said the time needed to bridge the aircraft, deplane the duo, retrieve their baggage, and submit new flight plans meant it was too late to depart, since Victoria’s runway closes at 12:30 a.m. Passengers were upset and unprepared to find a place to sleep, and the first person to give them information or advice was a baggage handler, Kozuch said. Flight attendants Kozuch chatted with told him they hadn’t seen anything like the child’s refusal across their decades of experience, he said. “Kids refuse this all the time, and eventually, they always comply,” Kozuch said. “At least, that’s what they assumed would happen.” Kozuch said online comments calling the child bratty or admonishing the toddler’s parents for not doing more don’t “empathetically capture the situation,” and he found the aircraft crew to be quite helpful. “This was a child that was in a tube with 150 people ... They’re obviously terrified, and their response was to try and hide under the seat in front of them,” he said. “That’s so different than a kid running around and screaming.” He said he wouldn’t expect the toddler’s parents to try to physically force them into their seat in an already stressful situation with so many passengers watching. Porter said other passengers had to wait for another flight the next day, and the airline has apologized to those travellers. Kozuch said he hasn’t heard anything from Porter but made it onto another Victoria-Toronto flight the next day, noting that it seemed “hilarious” that he had to deboard the first plane with six months of luggage in tow. He feels lucky that a friend was able to let him crash on the couch at 2:30 a.m. when the flight was cancelled, and said he hasn’t received any word on compensation from the airline. “An email would have been nice,” Kozuch said. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 10, 2026 Elissa Mendes, The Canadian Press
