Passengers aboard a U.S. Airways Express flight from Philadelphia to Long Island's MacArthur Airport staged a protest on Wednesday after flight personnel allegedly hassled a blind man over his guide dog.

The plane had apparently been waiting on the runway for nearly two hours, causing Albert Rizzi's increasingly restless guide dog, Doxy, to come creeping out from his designated place under Rizzi's seat. A flight attendant reportedly told Rizzi that the dog needed to stay put, or the plane would not take off. The dog refused to cooperate, and both Rizzi and his canine companion were booted from the flight. But Rizzi's fellow passengers decided that if he couldn't fly, they wouldn't, either.

“Security comes on and they go to take this gentleman off the plane with his dog,” passenger Frank Ohlhorst told CBS New York. “So when we, the passengers, realize what was going on, we were like ‘why is this happening? He’s not a problem."

According to the airline, Rizzi became verbally abusive when told his dog needed to stay seated, NBC Philadelphia reports. Passengers, tired of the prolonged wait to begin their 40-minute flight, were growing agitated—some on behalf of Rizzi, some from sheer impatience. Feeling threatened, the crew opted to cancel the flight, and all 35 passengers wound up taking the bus to Long Island instead.

Rizzi wrote his account of the story on his Facebook page: