HONOLULU -- An airline pilot on Tuesday ordered a 16-year-old Kalani High School student pulled off an East Coast flight after a coughing fit.

Rachel Collier was on a spring break trip with her school.

The girl's classmates returned home to Honolulu on Tuesday night, but Collier remained on the East Coast.

"I was behind her she started coughing like I heard she couldn't breathe and it felt like something was in the back of her throat," classmate Ayya Tawfir said.

Collier was having a great spring break on a school trip to New York and Washington, her mother said. The trip was her first without her parents.

Her father was clearly upset.

"When you get a call at 8:30 in the morning saying, from a crying daughter, you kind of get a little freaked out. What's going on?" Randy Collier said.

The fun turned into fear when she was kicked off a Continental Airlines flight headed for home.

"The police were called. The ambulance, the paramedics were called. She had fallen asleep in her seat and woke up coughing and a whole bunch of people standing around her, and was asked to leave the plane," Collier's mother, Stephanie, said.

Teacher Maile Kawamura said a doctor traveling on the plane checked Rachel Collier and said she was fine, had no fever and did not pose a threat to other passengers.

Despite that, the family was told, the pilot insisted Collier leave the plane.

"Upon boarding the plane was asked to leave by the pilot because she had a little bit of a coughing spell," Stephanie Collier said.

Rachel Collier and her teacher were left to find their own hotel for the night and had to buy clothes and toothbrushes because their luggage was already on the plane.

Randy Collier met with Continental officials at the airport.

"'Who's paying?' I wanted to know who's going to pay for their clothing, hotels. They just left them in the middle nowhere. They didn't provide anything," Rand Collier said. "They just said they were going to pay for the hotel."

"I'm frustrated. I'm really, really frustrated. Why they would do that, especially with two teachers escorting 40 children across the United States, and for the pilot to make that kind of decision," Stephanie Collier said.

A day before the incident, 272 passengers aboard a Continental flight from Hong Kong were detained in Newark amid fears of bird flu.

Centers for Disease Control officials quickly determined some passengers had a "seasonal flu."

Stephanie Collier said she spoke with someone at Continental who said the matter would be dealt with internally.

Rachel Collier and her teacher are scheduled to return to Hawaii on Wednesday evening.