Passenger row forces US plane to turn back

Passenger row forces US plane to turn back

A Southwest Airlines jetliner on its way to San Francisco returned to Los Angeles International Airport shortly after takeoff because of a fight between two passengers, officials say.

FBI agents met the plane at the gate late on Sunday and one person was removed from the Boeing 737, Southwest spokeswoman Melissa Ford said.

The pilot of Flight 2010 decided to return to the Los Angeles airport because of a “rapidly escalating” situation that culminated in a “physical altercation by one person against another”, Ford said on Monday.

She did not elaborate but said the two passengers involved were not travelling together.

According to Yahoo, it was a battle over reclined seats that sparked the war, with the female passenger claiming the man tried to choke her because she chose to shift her seat back.

Comedian Mark Curry, the star of the 1990s TV comedy Hangin’ with Mr Cooper who now hosts a morning radio show in San Francisco, said he was asleep on the plane and the commotion woke him up.

“I thought it was a terrorist so I jumped up,” Curry told KNTV-TV, the NBC affiliate in the Bay Area. “The woman was saying he grabbed her neck, saying ‘he choked me! He choked me! He hit me in the head!'”

Curry said, “The lady was frantic. They wanted me to put restraints on the guy. They asked me if I would help. I said, ‘At 30,000 feet, yes! I’ll beat anybody down.’ It was an incredible situation.”

The passenger who was removed from the flight was detained for questioning. No arrest was immediately made but the investigation was still under way, FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said.

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