A cross-country flight departing from Los Angeles and flying to Boston became the scene of frightening chaos after an unhinged passenger wielding a broken metal spoon attempted to open the doors and threatened to kill “every man” on the plane.
In a video captured from the terrifying moments, the crazed lunatic
“I will kill every man on this plane!” the unruly passenger shouted in a video.
“So where are they? Where’s Homeland Security?” he continued. “Pull the gun. Pull the gun… Tell them to bring SWAT to shoot me down because they’re going to have to shoot me down today.”
“Watch shocking video that shows a 33-year-old man trying to open an emergency exit door and attempting to stab a flight attendant in the neck with a broken metal spoon. The incident happened on a United Airlines flight from Los Angeles approximately 45 minutes before landing in Boston he was tackled by passengers on the plane and later was arrested by authorities,” a tweet is captioned as it depicts the harrowing moments leading to the subjugation of the man.
🚨#WATCH: Terrifying video as a man attacks a flight attendant and attempts to open emergency exit during United Airlines flight
⁰📌#Boston | #MA
⁰Watch shocking video that shows a 33-year-old man trying to open an emergency exit door and attempting to stab a flight attendant… https://t.co/SntFwMd4Xk pic.twitter.com/lRihhHGIbQ— R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) March 7, 2023
Immediately after the incident, calls for the TSA to both explain its Air Marshals program and increase the number of agents on flights flooded the internet. The TSA quickly responded by saying that, in typical bureaucratese, they could not provide such information as it could present “security” concerns.
“For security reasons, TSA will not confirm the deployment of Federal Air Marshals on flights,” the agency said in a statement.
Speaking to “Fox & Friends” a few days after the in-flight madness, the executive director of the Air Marshal National Council – Sonya Hightower-LaBosco – suggested that the TSA was not confirming or denying the lack of an air marshal owing to the fact they knew they had failed the security of the flight.
“Your eyes don’t lie. Did you see an air marshal on that plane?” she asked. “They know that they should’ve had air marshals on that aircraft. They had hundreds of air marshals standing around in the airport… in the Los Angeles airport and Boston.”
Hightower-LaBosco argued the terrorized flight to Boston should have been categorized as a “high-risk” based on its departure and arrival cities, duration of the flight, and size of the aircraft, among other factors.
“This flight was definitely a high-risk flight,” she continued. “You’ve got to look at the capacity of the field. It was an East Coast to West Coast. It was a large aircraft, and that was a flight that would be a regular route that we would have air marshals covering, so this definitely would be a priority one flight, and it should have been covered.”
“Thanks to the quick action of our crew and customers, one customer was restrained after becoming a security concern on United flight 2609 from Los Angeles to Boston,” United responded to the incident in a statement. “The flight landed safely and was met by law enforcement.”
United had better be providing more than a boilerplate thank you to the brave men who confronted the armed and dangerous individual threatening to kill everyone. Were it not for the heroics of other passengers, this flight could have turned out drastically different.
FAA Acting Administrator Billy Nolen made an appearance this week as well during a Senate hearing and was asked about his agency’s policy toward passengers like the one on the Boston-bound flight. He replied to lawmakers by noting that the agency has a “zero tolerance policy around unruly passengers.”
“I can assure you that we will take every step, every tool that we have at our disposal to ensure that action takes place against any perpetrator,” he said. “It is just simply not allowed.”
Featured image: Screen shot from embedded Twitter video.
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