Virgin Australia has apologised to a mother-of-two who was asked to leave the airline’s Melbourne lounge on Monday because she was pumping breast milk.<\/p>\n
In a story posted to her social media, Elise Turner said she was asked by a staff member to leave the lounge to breastfeed in a bathroom.<\/p>\n
“This is pretty unbelievable and I’m beyond furious right now,” Dr Turner said in a since-expired social media post.<\/p>\n
“I’ve been told that I can’t sit here in the Virgin lounge as a paying business class ticket-holder to express breast milk.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Elise Turner says she was told her breastfeeding was making other lounge guests uncomfortable. (Instagram: dreliseturner)<\/p>\n
Dr Turner says she attempted to “politely provide education” to the staff member that breastfeeding is protected under the Sex Discrimination Act of 1984.<\/p>\n
Under the Act, it is considered discrimination when a woman is treated less favourably because she is breastfeeding.<\/p>\n
In her social media post, Dr Turner said she asked the staff member if she prepared her own dinner “in a shared bathroom, a public bathroom or a public toilet”.<\/p>\n
“The staff member’s] reply was that I am making her and other people uncomfortable,” Dr Turner said.<\/p>\n
“And then she put her hand on my arm and asked me to leave the lounge.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Virgin Australia Lounge at Melbourne Airport. (Virgin Australia)<\/p>\n
“This is just disgusting,” she said.<\/p>\n
“This is 2025, and this is the sort of treatment that lactating mothers are expected to deal with.”<\/p>\n
In a statement, the Virgin Australia said it had apologised to Dr Turner directly.<\/p>\n
“We are sorry for the way this situation was handled,” the airline said in a statement.<\/p>\n
“It fell short of the high standards of care and customer service our team strives to deliver.<\/p>\n
“We have reached out to our guest today to apologise directly.”<\/p>\n
Virgin Australia said it had since followed up on the matter with the staff member involved.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Virgin Australia has apologised to a mother-of-two who was asked to leave the airline’s Melbourne lounge on Monday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146889,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3859,38619,76356,64,63,30644,99,66789,7033,12807],"class_list":["post-146888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-air-travel","tag-airline","tag-apology","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-breastfeeding","tag-business","tag-melbourne-airport","tag-virgin","tag-virgin-australia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}