A 61-year-old man was arrested on a flight into Salt Lake City International Airport on Monday after he yelled at the flight’s staff, growled like a dog and screamed “Joe Biden!” over and over again, according to multiple reports.
The incident took place on American Airlines flight 1802 from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City, per The Denver Channel.
“The flight landed safely at (Salt Lake City) where local law enforcement removed the disruptive passenger from the aircraft. We thank our crew for their professionalism and our customers for their understanding,” American Airlines said in a statement, per KSL.com.
Salt Lake police detained the man on Monday.
In video clips, the man can be seen growling like a dog from his seat as he wears a face mask. He then confronts flight attendants and staff during the flight. He shouts expletives at the flight attendants, using cuss words in his rant.
When asked to sit down, the man screams, “Joe Biden!”
Then, while sitting in his seat, the man apologizes to people on the plane and says, “That’s what I think of America.” He shakes his head and continues to repeat that phrase before law enforcement officials arrive to escort him off the plane.
Videos of the incident surfaced online. Passenger Dennis Busch shared some of those videos. He said the man was asked to calm down on the flight.
But then he went “into a complete meltdown of racist, sexist and belligerent comments, culminating in his arrest at the gate,” Busch said.
“We were lucky to have such a well-trained crew who kept their cool throughout the flight!” he wrote on Twitter.
The Federal Aviation Administration said it has fined people more than $1 million due to unruly behavior over the last year, as I wrote for the Deseret News. The fines were given out to passengers who had bad behavior on flights.