Telling her side of the story. Former Real Housewives of Atlanta star Kim Zolciak explained her Delta airline snafu in a new “House of Kim” podcast episode.
On the Thursday, August 1, show, aptly titled “Explaining the Deplaning,” the Don’t Be Tardy star, 41, claimed an agent of the company removed her children from the plane without her approval.
According to Zolciak, the alleged incident occurred while she was assisting her daughter Kaia, 5, in the restroom just ahead of takeoff.
“In the interim, I can hear my kids getting emotional. I look [and] my kids are off the plane and so are my bags,” she said of exiting the bathroom. “[My son] KJ said, ‘The guy told us it wasn’t an option — we had to get off the plane.'”
As Us Weekly previously reported, Zolciak’s daughter Brielle Biermann, 22, tweeted on July 20 that an employee of the airline forced her and her younger siblings to deboard the aircraft while they were waiting for Zolciak’s husband, Kroy Biermann, to get through security with the family’s service dog. “[He] just kicked my WHOLE FAMILY OFF the flight to ATL bc we were waiting on my dad with our service dog to finish going thru security,” she wrote in a now-deleted tweet. “KJ & kash started crying bc they thought we left him and Kaia was literally S–ING AND HE KICKED US OFF!!!!! WTF.”
Delta denied the allegations in a statement to Us Weekly on July 22, noting that Kroy, 33, had stayed behind while his family boarded their flight to clarify the dog’s paperwork and arrived at the gate after the door to the plane had been closed. “Mrs. Zolciak Biermann and family elected to deplane their flight after her husband remained behind to provide proper paperwork for an emotional support animal,” the company’s statement read.
Zolciak concedes that she left her spouse behind to do paperwork for the animal.
The former football player claimed on the podcast, however, that the airline had been given clearance to hold the plane for him by both the pilots and the tower and that he would have made the flight without the interference of the agent, who allegedly acted of his own accord.
The “Google Me” singer also denied that she ever voiced her desire to leave the plane to a member of Delta’s staff.
“I never said I wanted off the plane. I did tell the boys that we’re not gonna leave without daddy. I did say that to [my kids to] calm them, but you’re making an assumption,” she said. “There was no conversation with a flight attendant, with a gate agent, with a pilot or anybody else that I ever wanted to get off this plane at any f–cking point.”
She continued: “[The employee] who made this decision and made this call on his own, ahead of the supervisor … made the call on his own to open the door [and] remove the children.”
While both Zolicak and Kroy praised the majority of the Delta staff, calling them “incredibly sweet” and “so kind,” they maintained their stance that the airline employee in question was wrong to remove their children without a parent present.
“Kim and her family are not backing down from their account of what happened,” a source told Us exclusively last month. “Delta has apologized privately to Kim. Kim and her family felt genuinely disrespected by the Delta agent.”
Zolciak also addressed critics who claimed the incident was the result of “entitement” on Thursday. “I don’t have any sense of entitlement,” she said. “I definitely don’t expect anybody at any point to touch my children, take my children off a plane, take my bags off a plane when there’s no parent, like, it’s totally unacceptable and unprofessional.”
Us has reached out to Delta for response.
