The crew aboard an American Airlines flight was forced to duct tape a woman to her seat last week after she allegedly attempted to open the door of the aircraft in midflight, according to reports.
The harrowing incident occurred July 6 aboard Flight 1774 — a predawn trip from Dallas-Fort Worth to Charlotte, North Carolina.
The two-hour flight had been delayed for about three hours before the plane finally took off at midnight. But an hour into the flight, chaos erupted.
That’s when the woman allegedly stood up and tried “to open the forward boarding door” then “physically assaulted, bit and caused injury to a flight attendant” who tried to intervene, reports said.
Eventually the crew was able to overpower the woman and restrain her with duct tape “for the safety and security of other customers and our crew,” American Airlines confirmed in a statement.
Video of the episode posted on social media showed the woman with silver duct tape over her mouth, arms and across her body, and around the woman’s seat.
She could be heard screaming, “You! You! You!” as passengers walked past her to exit the plane, according to reports.
Passengers first noticed commotion in the cabin about 1:30 a.m., when flight attendants began turning on the lights and “running up and down the aisles, frantically,” according to The New York Post, citing footage posted by a TikTok user named @lol.ariee.
The crew next began locking bathrooms and grabbing bags from overhead bins, but wouldn’t reveal what was going on, @lol.ariee said.
Soon the pilot was on the intercom telling passengers to remain seated because of “a bad situation in the plane right now,” witnesses said.
“Then we’re gradually starting to hear more and more screaming, and we’re like, ‘Wait a minute,’” @lol.ariee said, according to reports.
It was unclear whether the unidentified woman would face any charges, but the airline placed her on a no-fly list pending an investigation, reports said.
After calm was restored, a flight attendant who sat near passengers during landing explained that the woman had experienced an apparent mental health episode, saying she “had an outburst and like, had the urge to get off the plane. And she was saying, ‘I need to get off this plane,’ and she went up to the exits and started banging on the doors, saying, ‘You need to let me off this plane!’” according to The New York Post.
Emergency personnel met the flight at the gate in Charlotte and took the woman to a local hospital for evaluation.
Last month, a passenger aboard a United Airlines flight from Los Angeles International Airport to Salt Lake City broke his leg after jumping from the emergency exit of the plane during takeoff.
Last week, a passenger aboard a Ryan Air Cessna Caravan flight in Alaska allegedly tried to take control of the plane and crash it, reports said. Jaden Lake-Kameroff, an 18-year-old from Bethel, stood from his seat and briefly took control of the yoke, which sent the plane into a nosedive before he was restrained by the other passengers, authorities said.
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