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This is a list of air rage incidents in commercial air travel that have been covered in the media. Air rage occurs when airline personnel or passengers act violently or disruptively towards others. When these incidents have occurred in flight, they have often required the pilots to divert and make an emergency landing in order to remove the individual(s), as the safety of those on board cannot be guaranteed otherwise. On the ground they have led to delayed departures. In the case of unruly passengers, the incidents have resulted in criminal charges; unruly crew often face disciplinary action including termination and, in some cases, charges as well.
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Pre-1990s | 1940s | 1950s | 1960s | |||||||
1990s | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | ||||
2000s | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 |
2010s | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 |
2020s | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (February 2021) |
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Video of the "air rage twins" on UAL Flight 857 |
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"Settle down, Captain Happy" exchange between ATL ATC and DAL 2422 on July 27, 2014 |
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Passengers being arrested on DAL 2565 after its return to MSP |
Date | Flight | Departure Location | Arrival Location | Description of Incident |
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January 12, 2020 | United Airlines Flight 4965 | Washington Dulles | Newark | A 28 year old man assaulted a flight attendant. When the plane stopped and the doors opened, the passenger allegedly charged at a crew of responding officers, causing them to fall down the stairs used for passengers and land on the pavement. The passenger was charged with aggravated assault, criminal trespassing, resisting arrest and interfering with transportation. [433] |
January 15, 2020 | American Airlines Flight 967 | Los Angeles | Chicago O'Hare | An intoxicated passenger caused the flight to divert to the Albuquerque Sunport after he began kicking seats, assaulting a flight attendant, and taking off his clothes. The man also began spitting gum at the passenger who was filming him and threatening to kill everybody. The plane diverted safely and police at Sunport arrested the suspect and charged him with assault, disorderly conduct, threatening passengers and crew, and intoxication. [434] |
February 22, 2020 | United Airlines Flight 933 | Frankfurt | Washington Dulles | Crew were alerted by a lavatory smoke alarm, and found a 27 year old woman smoking in the lavatory. As they escorted her back to her seat, she began crying, saying she was returning home for a funeral since the rest of her family had been killed in a car accident. Shortly afterwards she attempted to return to the lavatory, and pushed a crew member who tried to keep her from re-entering the lavatory. A flight marshal and other crew intervened, and she threatened to stab everyone on the plane and then commit suicide. A half-empty liter bottle of vodka was found in her carry-on. Upon landing at Dulles, she was arrested and charged with assaulting a federal agent, and admitted to an FBI agent that she had fabricated the story about her family. [435] |
February 26, 2020 | American Airlines Flight 927 | Miami, Florida | Guayaquil, Ecuador | A drunk passenger caused a disturbance after stealing liquor from the galley, yelling at flight attendants, and urinating in the aisle. Other passengers began talking to him and a flight attendant told the drunk passenger to return to his assigned seat and put his seat belt on. The drunk passenger refused to go back to his seat and a male flight attendant pushed the drunk man. The drunk passenger was arrested by police at the airport in Ecuador after the plane landed. [436] |
June 14, 2020 | WestJet Flight 706 | Vancouver, British Columbia | Toronto, Ontario | An unruly passenger took off his mask, (which was at the time required due to the COVID-19 pandemic), to smoke on the aircraft. After flight attendants saw him smoking, they told him to stop smoking and to put his mask back on. The man refused to put his mask back on and decided to continue smoking as he assaulted a flight attendant who instructed him to stop smoking. The plane diverted to Winnipeg and the passenger was arrested by officials of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The passenger was charged with mischief and three counts of failing to comply with flight crew instructions and was also ordered by a judge to pay a fine of $13,000. [437] [438] |
October 20, 2020 | JetBlue flight | Kingston, Jamaica | John F. Kennedy International Airport | During boarding, a man went into a racist tirade, shouting the n-word after he saw a black woman sitting in his assigned seat. He then accused the woman of kneeing him in the stomach, and assaulted flight attendants who tried to calm him down. He later ran down the aisles of the plane until flight attendants and other passengers were able to restrain him. The man was arrested by local police in Kingston before the flight could depart from the gate and JetBlue permanently banned him from flying on their airline. [439] |
May 23, 2021 | Southwest Airlines Flight 700 | Sacramento | San Diego | A woman assaulted a flight attendant during the plane's descent, after being asked to fasten her seatbelt and wear her mask properly. The incident was captured on video. [440] The passenger was arrested after the plane landed and was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison and a fine of over $33,000. [441] |
December 30, 2021 | Sunwing Airlines Flight 2283 | Montreal | Cancun | A group of reality television stars smoked e-cigarettes, consumed alcohol, and took off their masks on the flight, becoming so unruly that the flight crew was forced to hide from passengers. [442] Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada, called the passengers "barbarians". After the incident, passengers were denied boarding by multiple other airlines. [443] |
January 7, 2022 | Delta Air Lines Flight | Dublin | JFK Airport | A man was arrested in New York after behaving disruptively and violently for the entire flight. He refused to wear a mask as per COVID-19 protocols, mooned passengers and cabin crew, and generally harassed others on the plane. He was charged with interfering with a flight crew and intentionally assaulting and intimidating a member of a flight crew and held on $20,000 bail, then sent to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center for psychiatric evaluation. [444] |
Air France Flight 8969 was an Air France flight that was hijacked on 24 December 1994 by the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria (GIA) at Houari Boumediene Airport, Algiers. The terrorists murdered three passengers and their intention was either to detonate the aircraft over the Eiffel Tower or the Tour Montparnasse in Paris. When the aircraft reached Marseille, the National Gendarmerie Intervention Group (GIGN), a tier one counterterrorism and hostage rescue unit of the French National Gendarmerie, stormed the plane and killed all four hijackers.
On December 22, 2001, a failed shoe bombing attempt occurred aboard American Airlines Flight 63. The aircraft, a Boeing 767-300ER with 197 passengers and crew aboard, was flying from Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, France, to Miami International Airport in the U.S. state of Florida.
TWA Flight 847 was a regularly scheduled Trans World Airlines flight from Cairo to San Diego with en route stops in Athens, Rome, Boston, and Los Angeles. On the morning of June 14, 1985, Flight 847 was hijacked soon after take off from Athens. The hijackers demanded the release of 700 Shia Muslims from Israeli custody and took the plane repeatedly to Beirut and Algiers. Later Western analysis considered them members of the Hezbollah group, an allegation Hezbollah rejects.
This is a list of aviation-related events from 1972.
This is a list of aviation-related events from 1971.
The mile high club is slang for people who have had sexual intercourse on board an aircraft during flight. While this usually refers to sexual acts in an airliner lavatory, a sexual act anywhere on a plane in flight would fit the term. The actual height of the aircraft at the time the act takes place is not relevant; sexual activity in a plane flying 10 feet off the ground would still qualify.
Air rage is aggressive or violent behavior on the part of passengers and crew of aircraft, especially during flight. Air rage generally covers both behavior of a passenger or crew member that is likely caused by physiological or psychological stresses associated with air travel, and when a passenger or crew member becomes unruly, angry, or violent on an aircraft during a flight. Excessive consumption of alcohol is often a cause.
Uli Derickson was a German American flight attendant best known for her role in helping protect 152 passengers and crew members during the June 14, 1985, hijacking of TWA Flight 847 by militants with alleged links to Hezbollah.
QantasLink Flight 1737 was an afternoon Australian domestic flight from Melbourne Airport to Launceston Airport, which was subject to an attempted hijacking on 29 May 2003.
The JetBlue flight attendant incident occurred after JetBlue Airways Flight 1052, from Pittsburgh to New York City on August 9, 2010, had landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Steven Slater, a veteran flight attendant announced over the plane's public address system that he had been abused by a passenger and was quitting his job. He then grabbed and drank two beers and exited the plane by deploying the evacuation slide and sliding down it. Slater claimed to have been injured by a passenger when he instructed her to sit down. His account of the event was not corroborated by others who claimed he hip-checked the woman.
JetBlue Flight 191 was a scheduled domestic commercial passenger flight from New York to Las Vegas, United States. On March 27, 2012, the Airbus A320 serving the route diverted to Amarillo, Texas, after the captain, suffering from an apparent mental breakdown, started behaving erratically and making disturbing and incoherent statements, leading to the first officer tricking him into entering the cabin where he was restrained by staff and passengers. There were no fatalities.
Tianjin Airlines Flight 7554 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight between Hotan and Ürümqi in China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region. On 29 June 2012, an Embraer E190 operating the flight, took off from Hotan at 12:25 pm; within ten minutes, six ethnic Uyghur men, one of whom allegedly professed his motivation as jihad, announced their intent to hijack the aircraft, according to multiple witnesses. In response, passengers and crew resisted and successfully restrained the hijackers, who were armed with aluminium crutches and explosives.
The nut rage incident, colloquially referred to as "nutgate", was an air rage incident that occurred on December 5, 2014, at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City onboard Korean Air Flight 086. Korean Air vice president Heather Cho, dissatisfied with the way a flight attendant served nuts on the plane, ordered the aircraft to return to the gate before takeoff.
Pan Am Flight 841 was a commercial passenger flight of a Boeing 747 from San Francisco, California to Saigon, South Vietnam which was hijacked over the South China Sea on July 2, 1972, ostensibly as an act of protest concerning United States involvement in the Vietnam War as well as the expulsion from the U.S. of the South Vietnamese hijacker, a recent graduate of a U.S. university. The hijacking ended when the captain and passengers overcame and killed the lone hijacker after the plane landed at Tan Son Nhut Airport in Saigon.
On April 9, 2017, at Chicago O'Hare International Airport, four paying customers were selected to be involuntarily deplaned from United Express Flight 3411 to make room for four deadheading employees. One of these passengers was David Dao, 69, a Vietnamese-American who was injured when he was physically assaulted and forcefully removed from the flight by Chicago Department of Aviation Security officers. Dao, a pulmonologist, refused to leave his seat when directed because he needed to see patients the following day. In the process of removing him, the security officers struck his face against an armrest, then dragged him – bloodied, bruised, and unconscious – by his arms down the aircraft aisle, past rows of onlooking passengers. The incident is widely characterized by critics – and later by United Airlines itself – as an example of mishandled customer service.
On 7 March 1983, Balkan Bulgarian Airlines Flight 013, operated by an An-24, was hijacked by four hijackers demanding to go to Austria.
United Airlines Flight 976 was a regularly scheduled flight from Ministro Pistarini International Airport in Buenos Aires to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City on October 19-20, 1995. Upon landing, one passenger, Gerard Finneran, was arrested by the FBI and charged with interfering with a flight crew and threatening a flight attendant.
Alaska Airlines Flight 2059 was a scheduled domestic flight operated by Horizon Air for Alaska Airlines that was traveling from Paine Field in Everett, Washington to San Francisco International Airport on October 22, 2023, when an off-duty pilot deadheading in the jump seat of the cockpit reportedly attempted to crash the plane by disabling its engines. The Embraer 175 aircraft was operating at 31,000 feet (9,400 m) when the suspect, Joseph David Emerson, reportedly attempted to deploy the engine fire suppression systems, which could cut the fuel supply and cause a flameout. The crew reset the fire suppression systems, removed Emerson from the cockpit, and diverted to Portland International Airport in Oregon. Emerson was arrested in Portland and charged with 83 counts of attempted murder and other charges, but was released back to his California home on December 7, 2023, after posting a $50,000 bond.
The Guardian reported how cabin crew saw the pair acting drunk with Fitzgerald gyrating her hips on Blake's groin as they sat on a seat reserved for cabin crew.
Robinson's week-long holiday to Turkey started badly when he spent two days in hospital with an abscess on his buttock. Days later, he lost his only credit card.
As time goes on, Slater's story seems shakier and shakier. One senior investigator told NBC New York that more than 90 percent of the passengers on the JetBlue plane have been questioned by security officials and no one can corroborate the flight attendant's claims about what prompted him the exit the plane.
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