Wielding their aircraft galley’s coffee pot as a makeshift weapon, the crew of an American Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. subdued a passenger attempting to pry open the plane’s door on Sunday afternoon.
The harrowing scene, and subsequent emergency landing, was chronicled on social media by numerous passengers on Flight 1775. One posted a video of the pilot confirming that the suspect tried to barge into the cockpit first.
“He was trying to but he couldn’t get to it,” the pilot told another passenger, in footage of the conversation shared on Twitter. The pilot said the man then attempted to open the plane’s door—which would have been disastrous at that altitude.
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As of Feb. 8, there have been 394 unruly passenger incidents reported this year to the Federal Aviation Administration. There were 5,981 incidents reported in 2021—the worst year on record.
Sunday’s midair chaos occurred roughly three hours into the five-hour journey from Los Angeles Airport to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. The pilot said it was fortunate the plane was just 40 miles from an airport—and a flight tracker showed it made a sharp left turn and rapid descent into Kansas City just before 2:30 p.m.
Law enforcement officials who met the aircraft upon arrival determined the passenger had been “interfering with the flight crew,” and took him into custody, according to a statement from the FBI’s office in Kansas City. His name was not released.
A passenger in the 17th row, Karen Alston, told The Daily Beast that she had been watching a movie when the overhead lights came on suddenly, and she saw a number of passengers rushing toward the front of the plane.
“When people started standing up, I knew something was wrong,” she said.
A spokesperson for Association of Professional Flight Attendants confirmed to The Daily Beast that flight attendants had used a coffee pot to overpower the passenger.
“Details are still coming in, but I don’t believe alcohol was a factor,” the spokesperson emailed, adding that he was not “100%” certain of that yet.
Alston said she had been too far back to see the details of the fight, but heard a crew member put out a call for medical attention after the skirmish.
“The rest of us are fine, though,” she added. “We’re perfectly fine.”
In a statement issued shortly after the incident, an American Airlines spokesperson said, “We’re grateful to our crew members, who are consistently dedicated to the safety and care of our customers and who handled the circumstances with the utmost skill and professionalism.”
Alston told The Daily Beast she had been hoping to catch the Super Bowl, but with FBI officials still on the plane and interviewing witnesses as game time neared, it seemed unlikely she would make it back home in time.
“I should’ve stayed in L.A.,” she said, chuckling.
Read it at KSHB TV
