A man and woman were kicked off a JetBlue plane for refusing to wear masks, with the male passenger shouting curses - and lunging - at a flight steward in the presence of a crying five-year-old boy.
Footage captured at the Fort Lauderdale airport in Florida shows the unidentified man pointing his fingers and yelling at flight crew after being ordered off the plane for failing to comply with the federal mask mandate.
‘This is what you’re gonna do?’ the scowling man, who was not wearing a mask, told the employee before grabbing at his arm.
A second employee stepped between the men to prevent the scene from escalating to violence.
‘You made me wait four f****** hours for this flight,’ the passenger said. ‘You made me wait four God**** hours. You gave me one c*** sucking warning. You gave me one f****** warning. I pulled it up the second he said something.
‘F****** bulls***.’
His female companion encouraged passengers filming the scene to 'let it go viral,' after she failed to reason with another member of the flight crew.
A couple traveling on a JetBlue flight from Florida to California never made it off the tarmac after reportedly refusing to comply with federal mask mandates and being kicked off the plane
After being kicked off the California-bound plane, the man (left) shouted curses at staff, while the woman (right) vowed to sue. Before exiting the plane, she said: 'everyone I know is a lawyer'
The man’s companion, who had a sleep pillow wrapped around her neck, attempted to reason with other flight attendants before herself turning to expletives.
‘Bulls***,’ she said, before pulling her mask off her face to address passengers filming the scene.
She appeared at times to be slurring her words.
The woman told passengers the ordeal started after her five-year-old son's mask slid off his face.
‘My son knocked his face mask off by accident,’ the woman said. ‘He tried to put it back on, and they told us to get our stuff and get off. That’s all that happened.’
The woman said she didn’t know why she was getting the boot.
‘We’re American, we’re civilian, everything,’ she said. ‘It fell off his face and we apologized and fixed it. It wasn’t good enough for them.’
The unidentified blond woman told fellow passengers that the ordeal started when her son accidentally pulled his mask down, but JetBlue shared a different account of the situation
While exiting the plane, the woman hinted at legal troubles for the crew.
‘We’re gonna sue the s*** out of all of you,’ she told an employee, before demanding to know his last name. ‘Everyone I know is an attorney. '
The woman has not been identified by officials, but she at one point said: 'I'm Bacardi. Have you heard of that?'
The couple had been asked numerous times to comply with the federal mask mandate for air travel, JetBlue said in a statement provided to Mailonline.com.
‘Eventually the customers were asked to leave the aircraft at which time one customer became verbally and physically aggressive toward crewmembers before eventually exiting the aircraft,’ the airline said. ‘The customers will not be allowed to fly JetBlue in the future.’
It apologized to other passengers on the flight, and said its staff is trained to dreal with non-compliant customers.
'If a customer refuses to wear a face mask after being asked, crewmembers will work to de-escalate the situation to the best of their ability to gain compliance prior to removal,' the airline said. 'The safety of each customer and crewmember is our first priority, and we must work together to follow the federal mask mandate during the travel journey.'
JetBlue said in a statement that the couple became 'aggressive toward crewmembers' after being asked to leave the aircraft for refusing to follow the pandemic-induced rules
Passenger Alice Rusa pulled out her phone and began filming the unidentified couple when things started to get unruly ahead of takeoff.
‘I got the pleasure of boarding the plane behind this family and this lady took a boomerang on the way to her seat, wobbling around so I figured she was a lil drunk,’ Rusa said in the Instagram post. ‘Her water bottle in her bag was without a top so I told her.
‘The flight attendant told her to fix her son’s mask at the entry, which she didn’t and her husband and her both had their masks on off the nose the whole time.’
The incident was the latest in a string of passengers verbally – and sometimes physically – assaulting flight crews over mask mandates.
The trend prompted President Joe Biden to tear into unruly passengers who have defied federal mask mandates during air travel during a White House speech earlier this month.
The woman who filmed the incident said the woman was 'wobbling around' and drank a boomerang cocktail before boarding the flight without properly wearing her face mask
Biden said that the Transportation and Safety Administration would be doubling fines for travelers refusing to wear a mask.
The new penalties, which took effect September 10, range from $500 to $1,000 for first offenders.
'And by the way, show some respect,’ he said. ‘Anger you see on television toward flight attendants and others doing their job is wrong, it's ugly.’
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