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Plane passenger escorted from Florida flight after erupting over crying baby

“You’re yelling,” the man was warned, to which he answered: “So is the baby!”

Helen Wilson-Beevers
Wednesday 19 April 2023 17:43 BST
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The Southwest Airlines flight was forced to divert due to the incident
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An angry plane passenger has been recorded shouting about a crying baby on a Southwest Airlines flight to Florida in a video shared on TikTok by a fellow traveller.

The video by @mjgrabowski has now been viewed over 168,000 times and shows the man repeatedly shouting and swearing at flight attendants.

The social media post is titled “belligerent passenger causes diversion” and leads with the introductory caption: “Stuck in a holding pattern for weather, and an SWA passenger loses his mind over a baby.”

In the video, the camera initially faces the passenger filming the scene and viewers can see a group of flight attendants over his shoulder.

A man raising his voice in the background is heard saying: “That child has been crying for 40 minutes.”

This passenger then pleads with flight attendants to stop the screaming because he was sleeping, asking: “Calm the child down, please.”

After the man is heard becoming increasingly annoyed, the flight attendants ask him to stop screaming.

“I’m not screaming, you want me to scream?” he responds, adding: “I’ll f***king scream.”

He then continues to swear profusely, and the camera pans back to the passenger filming who laughs and looks amused. Meanwhile, a baby can be heard crying loudly throughout.

When one of the flight attendants signals to a colleague and says they need to call authorities, the passenger rages: “You can’t do what the f**k you feel like”.

“We are in a f***king tin can with a baby in a goddamn echo chamber,” he later says, after being asked to be rational.

“You’re yelling,” the flight attendant warns him, to which the irate passenger answers: “So is the baby!”.

The man continues swearing and shouting, as the woman sitting beside him tries to calm him down and ends up putting her head in her hands.

When the plane lands at Orlando, the TikTok user explains the passenger has refused to get off the plane and shows himself and two women laughing. After telling followers that everyone on the flight is now getting deplaned, the camera pans to the angry passenger and his presumed partner, who still has her head in her hands while he continues swearing.

The video finishes with the words: “He tried to plead his case that he had a right to yell because there were two adults with the crying baby, and he shouldn’t have been disturbed.”

The disruptive passenger is then seen being led away by police, and the last caption reads: “Well, that’s probably not how his wife imagined their Florida getaway going.”

Followers were quick to comment underneath the video, and some people sympathised with the passenger.

“I’m a parent and I understand his frustration. The overstimulation of having to listen to a child scream and cry would be too much,” one wrote.

Meanwhile, others felt for the baby’s parents. “Please tell me the rest of the plane reassured the mom it was okay,” someone commented, and another added: “How do you think the baby’s parents feel?”

There was also appreciation for the TikTok poster who shared the incident.

“Dude filming this is cracking up, he is the best.”, one person said, and another finished: “Your laughing face is the best part.”

A Southwest Airlines spokesperson told The Independent: “We do not have details of this flight to share. We commend our crew for exhibiting outstanding professionalism while handling a challenging situation and offer our apologies to the other customers onboard who had to experience such unacceptable behaviour.”

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