A Nevada man was arrested and removed from an American Airlines flight from Los Angeles on Monday after calling another passenger and the flight crew.
The 61-year-old passenger reportedly started yelling halfway through the flight after telling another passenger, who was standing, to sit down, he told a local reporter, Dennis Busch, a resident of Salt Lake City.
@funnydenny God bless the flight attendants and pilots for what they have to deal with. #kevin #americanairlines #lax #slc #meltdown #flightattendant #labourday
Sound so original – FunnyDenny
Flight attendants approached the man, in an attempt to calm him down, when he was told to start shouting “they don’t belong here” at a woman of Asian descent and another passenger he was with.
“He just shouted that they didn’t belong here and claimed that that wasn’t his seat, but that he was there all the time,” Busch told the Salt Lake Tribune. “After that, the flight attendants made this couple go back.”
In a video Busch posted on TikTok, the man can be seen taking off his mask and shouting at a crew member.
“I would scream, I would swear, I would throw them at me, all sorts of things,” Busch said. “Then he got out of his seat, in spite of them, you know, repeatedly asking him to sit down.”
Once the plane landed, the man was arrested by local police officers and later taken to hospital, the Tribune reported.
He was cited for public intoxication and disorderly conduct, according to a press release.
Busch told the rostrum that flight attendants handled the “terrible situation” the best they could.
Earlier this year, the Federal Aviation Authority warned of an increase in the number of unruly passengers aboard U.S. flights, along with a plan to charge high fines against people involved in such behavior.