Unruly Passenger’s Angry Mask Tirade Delays Miami-Bound Flight

By Kurt Stolz on 25 July 2021
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American Airlines is the world’s largest carrier

An unruly passenger who wasn’t wearing a face mask caused a major disruption on an American Airlines flight about to depart for Miami International Airport from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport on Friday.

Flight 1466 was scheduled to depart at 1:30 p.m. local time but was delayed two hours and one minute by the disruption.

Passengers on the flight told local news media in Miami that the man had come onto the flight taking selfies with other passengers and “fist bumping” them until a flight attendant walked up to him. “Sir, you can’t be doing that,” he was told.

The passenger, who remains unidentified but was a black male wearing a white shirt and blue cap, stood in the aisle and launched into an uncontrollable tirade.

The passenger, who did not comply with crewmember instructions, was then told to leave the plane, instructions with which he also did not comply.

“I did nothing wrong. I was boarding my flight, and they’re going to kick me off my flight and ruin my trip for no reason,” he says in a video posted on social media by a passenger. “I did nothing wrong.”

“The only people you care about are yourselves,” the passenger can be heard shouting at others in the cabin in the video.

He later screamed and cursed at other passengers as well.

The airline, in a statement to Frequent Business Traveler, said that the passenger “failed to follow crewmember instructions and the federal face mask requirement.”

President Joseph Biden instituted a federal mask mandate on all commercial flights as well as on other modes of transit shortly after his inauguration earlier this year as a means of stemming the spread of the coronavirus.

(Photo: Accura Media Group)

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