During a tumultuous trip from Los Angeles to Atlanta on Friday, a Delta Airlines captain requested the assistance of muscular men to restrain a “difficult passenger” who turned out to be an off-duty flight attendant.
During Flight 1730, an anonymous off-duty flight attendant reportedly seized the plane’s public address system to speak to passengers about their oxygen masks, resulting in a dramatic struggle with passengers, according to a Delta representative.
“This is the captain speaking. We’d like all strong males to come to the front of the aircraft to handle a problem passenger,” the pilot told passengers mid-air, according to NBC Los Angeles.
Several male passengers are seen grappling with the man at the front of the plane in a 38-second video uploaded on Twitter. In the video, one person can be heard yelling, “Help, help!” Another person can be heard saying, “Keep him down, keep him down.” Since it was posted online on Friday evening, the video has been seen over 2.3 million times.
Because of the incident, the jet was diverted to Oklahoma City, where it landed approximately 10:30 p.m. local time. Flight 1730, according to the Delta website, departed Oklahoma City at 2 a.m. the next morning and arrived in Atlanta safely three hours later.
In a statement, Delta spokesperson Eric Zeugschmidt said “the aircraft landed without incident and the passenger was removed by law enforcement. We apologize to our customers for the delay and any additional inconvenience this caused.”
Someone tried hijacking our plane from LAX to ATL pic.twitter.com/fkPDPR60hu
— AB (@alifuckingburns) June 12, 2021
According to the New York Times, after local police in Oklahoma City confirmed that the rowdy passenger had been hospitalized and released to the FBI, Megan Lauro, a spokesman for the federal law enforcement organization, said on Saturday that the event was being investigated. FBI agents were also interviewing the individual in custody, according to Lauro.
Brannon Nazarian, a passenger on the flight, told local news “there were people rushing up to the front, and he started shoving people, and there was this outrageous flight. He was fighting them back extremely hard. His feet were flying in the air. The flight attendant looked like he had a concussion.”
The Federal Aviation Administration issued a warning in early May to air travelers about a “substantial” increase in risky behavior aboard flights in 2021. According to the agency, there are generally 100-150 official occurrences of rowdy passenger behavior in a regular year, but that number jumped to more than 1,300 in the first four months of this year.
Delta Airlines has been contacted by Fichuzi News for more information. Any reaction will be added to this report.