Unruly, growling passenger disrupts flight from LAX to Salt Lake City

LOS ANGELES - A passenger is giving an American Airlines flight crew praise for the way they handled a belligerent passenger on the flight from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City. The hostile behavior was documented by one of the passengers and was posted to social media.

The flight typically lasts an hour and a half, but for passengers on American Airlines flight 1802, it likely seemed much longer. 

In the first video that was posted to Twitter by Dennis Busch, a man is seen growling, hissing, and chewing his face mask. Busch had a connecting flight through Los Angeles after enjoying a Hawaiian vacation. 

According to Busch, his actions were first directed toward a woman of Asian descent who temporarily stood on the plane due to her back issues.

"It was very uncomfortable. She started to cry and I realized this was going to be more than one racist outburst," Busch said. 

The visibly agitated passenger then began to direct his anger toward the flight staff and got out of his seat to confront them. In another video, he is seen arguing with the co-pilot, saying that the woman and her companion "didn’t belong there." After the argument, he appeared to stumble backwards through the aisle. He then pulled his face mask over his eyes as he’s heard shouting "Joe Biden, really?"

"He was swearing, he was yelling, he was flipping them off," Dennis Busch told FOX 11’s Chelsea Edwards. 

RELATED:

• LA bound flight diverted to Denver due to unruly passenger
• Delta crew, passengers detain unruly man, prompting emergency landing
• Flight from LAX diverted to Oklahoma City after 'unruly passenger' is restrained
• FAA has received 3,000 reports of unruly airline passengers in 2021 so far

According to Busch, the flight crew instructed the passengers not to engage. 

"You could just feel the anxiety in the whole cabin as everyone tensed up not knowing what was going to happen," he said. "The flight crew asked us to not engage and I think everyone could see that we were probably in the midst of a loose cannon."  

Finally, once the plane landed following the flight all passengers and crew members won’t soon forget, the man is seen mumbling to himself as he was escorted off the plane by police. 

"When he was taken off and we could no longer see him, there was a long pause of relief. I stopped recording and everyone clapped," Busch recalled. 

The FAA confirms the flight landed in Salt Lake City after a report of an unruly passenger. Federal authorities were investigating the incident. 

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