Tis the season to deck fellow travelers in the aisle of your holiday flight.
A ‘loud, drunken’ passenger who was reportedly violating mask mandates on a red-eye Delta flight from Los Angeles to Memphis engaged in little impromptu MMA with a fellow traveler, a newly released video on TMZ shows.
The man in blue, who apparently had a little too much Christmas cheer, was not wearing his mask properly, annoying other passengers, according to the website’s sources.
‘You must be from L.A. because you think you’re better than everyone else,’ his opponent quipped.
And then things got personal when one of the men said: ‘You’re a really horrible person.’
The video picks up after the insults were hurled and the two men can been seen bear hugging each other and clawing one and other in the face.
A woman screams ‘stop, stop’ and both try unsuccessfully to throw the half-nelson, causing the man dressed in tan’s shirt to rid ride up and mussing the thinning hair of the rival in blue.
One of the man tries to palm the other’s face and then the wild swinging begins.
Neither of the combatants land a punch, of course, and the woman continues to scream in the background.
Another passenger comes between the two men seconds later and, breathless, they both retreat in opposite directions down the aisle.
According to the celebrity news website’s source, police were either never called or failed to show up when the plane touched down in Memphis. Both men exited the plane and kept their distance at the luggage carousel.
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A ‘loud, drunken’ passenger who was reportedly violating mask mandates on a red-eye flight from Los Angeles to Memphis engaged in little impromptu MMA with a fellow traveler, a newly video on TMZ shows
The man in blue, who apparently had a little too much Christmas cheer, was not wearing his mask properly, annoying other passengers, according to TMZ’s sources
‘You must be from L.A. because you think you’re better than everyone else,’ his opponent who was wearing a black mask quipped
Another passenger comes between the two men seconds later and, breathless, they both retreat in opposite directions down the aisle
Police were either never called or failed to show up when the plane touched down in Memphis, according to TMZ
The two men are lucky to be flying at all. Airlines grounded 600 flights across the country on Christmas Eve due to weather problems and staffing shortages brought on by the spread of the super-contagious Omicron variant of COVID-19.
The brief bout was just the latest in a pandemic plan brawl trend.
These in-flight fisticuffs were among the 5,779 disruptive passenger incidents logged by the Federal Aviation Administration in 2021. Naturally, 4,158 of those were due to passengers refusing to wear masks.
Drunk passenger accounted for another 300 incidents on planes, according to the FAA.
Unruly passengers have forked over more than $1 million in fines this year alone.
More than $1 million in fines have been doled out to unruly passenger behavior in 2021 alone.
On Wednesday, Vyvianna Quinonez, 28, of Sacramento, pleaded guilty to interfering with the flight crew after she punched a stewardess in the face this past May.
A male passenger jumped between Vyvianna Quinonez and the flight attendant to stop an assault earlier this week
Quinonez seems to have better fighting skills than the men on the Memphis flight — she chipped the flight attendant’s teeth and bloodied her face during the melee.
She faces 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, but will likely get a reduced sentenced under a plea deal.
The FAA and the Transportation Security Administration have had enough of the bad behavior. They will begin fining unruly passengers and revoking their TSA PreCheck privileges.
‘If you act out of line, you will wait in line,’ FAA Administrator Steve Dickson said.