NEW YORK (AP) — A group of around 100 high school students traveling from New York to Atlanta were ejected from an AirTran flight after the pilot and crew lost patience with kids who wouldn't sit down and put away their phones.

The incident happened at around 6 a.m. Monday at LaGuardia Airport and involved seniors from the Yeshiva of Flatbush, in Brooklyn.

AirTran is a subsidiary of Southwest Airlines. Southwest said in a statement that the crew and captain asked passengers several times to put their mobile devices away. When some didn't comply, the whole group was ordered to disembark.

School Executive Director Seth Linfield says administrators are still looking into the situation, but that "preliminarily, it does not appear that the action taken by the flight crew was justified."