A flight was forced to make an emergency landing after a man allegedly began yelling that the woman behind him was trying to jab him with a syringe.
The chaotic incident happened during a Frontier Airlines flight from New York’s LaGuardia Airport to Orlando, during which a passenger reportedly complained that another passenger was attacking him with the needle from behind.
The flight was consequently grounded at -Durham International Airport, the Mail Online reported.
The man was then led off the plane to find law enforcement, fire rescue and EMS were waiting to escort him.
Video footage shot from inside the plane shows several male passengers attempting to restrain the man, who screamed at them in response.
“You can’t do this!” he allegedly yelled.
The footage, which has been circulated on social media, shows at least six other passengers crowded around him on the flight, attempting to get him to stay put.
“Hey y'all, he needs to sit in his seat,” one woman can be heard saying. “So don't tie his feet like that. He needs to be able to sit in his seat.”
Other passengers can be heard screaming at other people to “tie him up”.
Another passenger on the man’s flight on Wednesday told WTVD that he threatened a baby and said he would kill everyone.
According to statistics from the Federal Aviation Administration, passenger disruptions have increased during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Federal Aviation Administration has initiated 1,099 investigations into such cases in 2021, compared with 146 in 2019 and 159 in 2018.
According to the FAA, the administration has received 394 reports of unruly passengers so far this year.
Most of the passengers - 225 - were related to the use of face masks.
Under CDC guidance, face masks are legally required on trains, planes, buses, airports and other transportation terminals.
On January 19, a flight from Miami to London turned around after 90 minutes and landed back where it started, after a drunk passenger in first class refused to follow the federal mask mandate.
Miami-Date police were notified and once the plane landed, officers escorted a woman off the plane at Miami International Airport without incident.
A witness told WPLG that the woman and her companion, both of whom were travelling first class, were drunk and refusing to don face masks.
“There was a lot of drinking involved and I was nervous,' Steve Freeman, who was a front-row witness to the incident,” said.
“She sat behind us in first class — she was a first-class passenger and was extremely abusive to the stewards.”
According to a spokesperson for the Miami-Dade Police department, American Airlines staff dealt with the passenger, placing her on the airline’s no-fly list pending further investigation.
