‘Unruly Passenger’ Tries Opening Plane Exit Door Mid-Flight on American Airlines
An American Airlines flight traveling from Chicago to Dallas was diverted to Missouri on Tuesday after a man tried to open an exit door minutes into the trip.
The “unruly passenger” was taken into custody after the plane landed in St. Louis and no passengers or crew members were injured during the bizarre incident, the airline told the Daily News in a statement.
Multiple fellow passengers apparently helped take him down before he could pose a threat to those on board.
“Everyone who could get to the guy got the guy to subdue him,” DJ Mitchell, who said he held the man on the ground until the flight landed, told NBC DFW in Texas.
“There was no screaming, no excitement,” he said, adding that it was just “a little nerve-wracking.”
A video shared on social media shows officers taking the suspect into custody as several passengers record the scene with their cellphones.
Another passenger said it was not clear whether the man was intoxicated.
“He reminded me of a mouse trying to get out of a cardboard box, and he was just going at every single lever right in front of me, on the door," Jonathan Cowan told the station.
Flight 2300 had departed Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport at 6:54 p.m., local time, and landed in St. Louis just before 7:40 p.m., according to data from FlightAware. It took off again around 11 p.m. and arrived in Texas around 12:40 a.m.
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