JetBlue Flight Diverted due to Unruly Passenger
A JetBlue Airways flight to the Dominican Republic from Boston had to divert to Washington, DC on Friday afternoon due to an unruly female passenger, according to federal officials and the airline. Mateo Lleras, a spokesman for the carrier, said that the plane landed at 1:13pm at the Washington-Dulles International Airport. The Transportation Safety Administration and the local police were notified, and the passenger was arrested upon landing, he continued. He wasn’t able to give more details about what the passenger was doing to be unruly.
However, a security official familiar with the incident said that the woman may have had an anxiety attack, but there hadn’t been an official medical diagnosis. Several passengers thought that the woman may have been in her late teens and reported that she was acting strange.
One of the passengers, Victor Pimentel, said that the woman started yelling that someone stole her money, then asked the flight attendants to help her find it. When one of the stewards approached her, she hit him with her fists. She also spit on one of them, according to Maria Celon, another passenger, who said that the flight attendants reacted quickly, moving her to another seat, tying her hands and calming her down. No one was afraid due to their fast response, she added.
Nobody got hurt during the incident, and the flight continued its journey just before 2pm. Airport spokesman Rob Yingling said that the woman was released by mid-afternoon, and no charges were filed.
It seems that JetBlue Airways has been in the news a lot lately. Last week, one of their stewards, Steven Slater, made a name for himself by leaving a flight via the emergency chute after addressing the passengers over the intercom system - all due to a passenger treating him rudely, he says.
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