Fists flew on a Monday Southwest Airlines flight from Oakland to Kauai, with transportation authorities sharing footage of the incident alongside reminders that unruly passengers can face criminal prosecution and fines of up to $37,000.
Kauai Police told NBC News that although its officers responded to assist when Flight 1288 landed in Lihue, no criminal charges were pressed. However, the Federal Aviation Administration is assessing potential fines for the parties involved, the "Today" show reported.
"Our department has zero tolerance for violent or unruly behavior aboard an aircraft. If you act out on an airplane, you can face criminal prosecution and fines up to $37,000," the U.S. Department of Transportation wrote in a post on X following the incident.
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Witnesses say that both men were detained after their plane landed, but it's not entirely clear what led them to exchange blows. In footage of the incident, a flight attendant and other passengers can be seen stepping in to separate and calm the two men.
"I heard yelling, screaming and punches. I turned around and saw one man bleeding and then the other man being separated," Southwest passenger Jim Wieder told Hawaii News Now of the incident. "Frankly, I was a little nervous because we’re 35,000 feet and you’ve got two guys swinging at each other, which makes no sense whatsoever."
The son of the man throwing many of the punches in the video said his father got into a confrontation with an allegedly drunk passenger who refused to stop bothering his mother, CBS News reported.
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But regardless of the situation, aviation expert Peter Forman told CBS News, an airplane is "just too dangerous a place to have punches being thrown."
"Keep in mind that there's a lot of money involved in turning a plane around," Forman told the outlet.
"There's tens of thousands of dollars' worth of fuel. Plus the airplane falls behind schedule. It's going to take maybe a day for that plane to get back on schedule. There's a lot of disruptions to a lot of travelers, missed connections and things, so its a big deal."
Threatening and violent incidents on flights have been steadily increasing since 2021, the FAA writes on its page of "unruly passenger statistics."
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There have been 206 such incidents thus far in 2024 as of Feb. 11, according to the agency. The 2021 all-time high of 5,973 unruly passengers reported has steadily declined, reaching 2,455 incidents in 2022 and 2,075 in 2023. But disruptions still exceed pre-pandemic rates, FAA data shows.
Regardless, Hawaii-based flight attendants told Hawaii News Now that they were surprised the fight happened en route to the vacation destination:
"I've been flying 45 years and, no, it was not like this," one flight attendant told the outlet. "Probably the worst thing that happened a couple years ago was a passenger taking a couple peanuts."
