Gold Coast doctor furious at being kicked out of Virgin business lounge at Melbourne airport for pumping milk

A Queensland doctor specialising in women’s health has been asked to leave an airport lounge for expressing breast milk for her twin babies.

Dr Elise Turner, a Gold Coast-based GP, was at the Virgin airport business lounge at Melbourne Airport when she was asked to stop pumping breast milk beneath her T-shirt.

“This is unbelievable,” she said in a video posted to social media just after the incident on Monday.

“I’m beyond furious right now. I’ve been told I can’t sit here in the Virgin lounge as a paying business-class ticket holder to express breast milk (because) this is a private business lounge, and we don’t do that here.”

Turner, who is mother to a seven-month-old boy and girl, said she later tried to explain to the service manager that breastfeeding is protected under the National Sex Discrimination Act of 1984, however, this made no difference, and she was still asked to leave.

“(The service manager) has explicitly told me I am not to do that in the public lounge area, and that I must go and sit in a bathroom, in a toilet,” she said.

“I did ask her, ‘Do you prepare your own dinner in a shared bathroom, a public bathroom, or a public toilet?’ She didn’t have an answer for that.”

Turner, whose pumping was fully covered by her shirt, said the service manager told her she was making people “uncomfortable” before putting a hand on her arm and asking her to leave the lounge.

“This is just disgusting,” she said. “This is 2025, and this is the sort of treatment that lactating mothers are expected to deal with.”

Virgin Australia said it was “sorry for the way the situation was handled”.

“It fell short of the high standards of care and customer service our team strives to deliver,” a spokesperson said.

“We have reached out to our guest today to apologise directly.”