With the rise of social media, we have also started witnessing a phenomenon called "Travelers Behaving Badly" — other passengers are quick to whip out their phones at the slightest disturbance and videos of particularly egregious behavior often go social media viral.
At the start of April 2023, one such video of a Southwest (LUV) passenger yelling over a crying baby gathered over a million views. Another video captured a four-person brawl that forced regional Australian carrier Alliance Airlines to make an emergency landing.
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The latest incident occurred on a Frontier Airlines (FRON) flight from Trenton, New Jersey to Atlanta, Georgia. A passenger on the flight, Lanais Li posted a series of videos capturing an argument between a couple, a flight attendant and a number of other travelers onto ByteDance-owned TikTok.
Traveler Goes Wild in Video
In the first video, one female passenger is seen leaning over several rows and yelling at a couple to "mind your f**ing business." According to Li's account, the other passenger had made remarks about her and her partner arguing with a flight attendant about a seat change as a plane full of travelers sits on the tarmac.
"I'm just tryna get home,' Li wrote in the caption to the video, which ended up receiving over 137,000 likes and over 3.5 million views.
"Still tryna to get home," Li wrote in another video that captures a fourth passenger asking others to weigh in on whether they'd like the woman in the first video taken off the flight.
"We have 40-50 people here who'd like her removed from the flight," the male passenger said. "If you can hear me and want her removed from the flight, raise your hand! I'm not even kidding."
'Regular People Telling These People To Get Off The Plane'
At least half a dozen people are seen putting up their hands as a Frontier flight attendant walks down the aisle. Ground crew members in orange vests later arrived and led both the woman and her partner off the flight as they continued arguing and asking not to be taken off.
The three minute-long videos of the incident that Li posted on TikTok collectively gathered nearly 15 million views. Many viewers weighed in on whether other passengers have the right to tell another traveler to get off the plane or hold such "votes" when the airline is not taking action.
"Getting voted off the plane in the air is crazy," wrote one person in one of the most-liked comments.
"We can’t unionize a Starbucks but we can damn sure do it on a Frontier flight," wrote another commenter using the DesignerHugs username.
"I want to know why these regular people is on here telling these people to get off this plane," another passenger is heard asking in one of the videos. "Because where is the police?"
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) classifies an "unruly passenger" as someone "interfering with the duties of a crew member" in a way that violates federal law. Arguing or being loud by itself does not necessarily meet this definition and the first call on whether to call in ground crews often comes down to the flight attendant — according to the government agency, there have been 586 incidents in which someone was classified as an unruly passenger so far in 2023.
