Arman Tsarukyan and some of his friends were removed from an American Airlines flight bound for Philadelphia after an altercation prior to takeoff.<\/p>\n
Video surfaced on Thursday showing Tsarukyan being taken off the plane with initial reports stating that he was talking on his phone while the flight was preparing for takeoff. Tsarukyan was traveling from Los Angeles to Philadelphia for his match at RAF 8 where he faces Urijah Faber in the co-main event.<\/p>\n
Following video of Tsarukyan and his friends being removed from the flight went public, American Airlines officials issued a statement to MMA Fighting regarding the incident involving the top ranked lightweight contender.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn April 16, American Airlines flight 513 returned to the gate at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) for customers who refused to follow federal regulations,\u201d American Airlines officials stated.<\/p>\n
\u201cSafety is our top priority and we expect our customers to comply with crew member instructions while on board our aircraft, which include staying seated while the aircraft is taxiing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The incident apparently didn\u2019t involve anybody on their phone, but rather Tsarukyan and his friends standing in the aisle while the aircraft was taxiing and they refused to sit in their assigned seats. Crew members attempted to get the passengers to return to their seats before ultimately the decision was made to return to the gate<\/p>\n
Four people, including Tsarukyan, were removed from the flight and the plane departed for Philadelphia shortly thereafter.<\/p>\n
Following the altercation, Tsarukyan took to Instagram to saying \u201ckicked off commercial, I guess private it is\u201d as he boarded a separate flight bound for Philadelphia.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope they\u2019re not going to kick me out from this plane,\u201d Tsarukyan said as he boarded the private flight. \u201cOK guys, I\u2019ll be five hours in Philadelphia.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tsarukyan is making his fourth appearance in RAF on Saturday after previous matchups against Lance Palmer and Georgio Poullas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arman Tsarukyan and some of his friends were removed from an American Airlines flight bound for Philadelphia after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":610376,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,168750,168751,82,640,702],"class_list":{"0":"post-610375","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-raf-wrestling","14":"tag-raf-wrestling-news","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-ufc","17":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/610376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}