Next time you fly, remember attendant who fought man trying to ‘bring down the plane’

On an otherwise unremarkable Southwest flight from Dallas into Kansas City on Saturday morning, an attendant begged passengers to pull their masks on properly. Yet even then, not everyone did. “Go ahead, shake your head and roll your eyes,” he finally announced in frustration. “We’ve seen it all.”

That’s not just a feeling, but a fact: Federal Aviation Administration data shows there were more incidents — nearly 6,000 — involving unruly passengers last year than during any other year on record. Of the 5,981 such incidents, 4,290, or about 72%, were mask-related.

Now, that highly agitated California man who forced an emergency landing at KCI Airport on Sunday does not seem to have been trying to make a political statement about masks or anything else; flight attendants told the FBI that he thought people were following him and trying to hurt his family.

But when he reportedly tried to force his way into the cockpit of the American Airlines plane and tried to open an emergency hatch in flight, yelling, “We’re going to bring down the plane,” who was the most immediately at risk?

The flight attendants he kicked and shoved with a service cart, that’s who. And who acted first to stop him? The flight attendant who conked him twice over the head with a coffee pot before several passengers, including a Maryland police officer, joined the effort to subdue him.

All of this to say, the next time you’re tempted to own the flight attendants by giving them grief about masks, remember that in making their already difficult jobs just a little bit harder, you’re only tormenting those we count on to keep all of us safe in flight.

This story was originally published February 15, 2022 at 10:20 AM.