Another flight headed to Newark has been diverted because of an unruly passenger, marking the second such incident in just a matter of days.<\/p>\n
The FAA said a United Airlines flight traveling from Milan, Italy, to Newark was forced to land in Maine on Tuesday because of a disruptive passenger.<\/p>\n
The incident comes less than a week after an American Airlines flight from Dallas to Newark was diverted to Baltimore after a passenger became disruptive onboard.<\/p>\n
Richard O’Lenick and Juan Mejia, who were passengers on that flight, told News 12 they stepped in when the situation escalated.<\/p>\n
“This passenger started yelling profanities,” O’Lenick said.<\/p>\n
“Everything was calm until it wasn’t calm,” Mejia added.<\/p>\n
The two men said flight attendants worked to de-escalate the situation before it became physical.<\/p>\n
“The flight attendants did the best they could to manage the situation. The situation turned physical,” O’Lenick said.<\/p>\n
Mejia said crew members handed him zip ties and duct tape, which were used to restrain the passenger.<\/p>\n
Police in Maryland arrested 67-year-old Arthur Lundeen, of Arizona, after the flight landed. He was charged with disorderly conduct and second-degree assault.<\/p>\n
Authorities said both incidents remain under investigation.<\/p>\n
Security analyst Rich Kolko said reports of disruptive passengers have increased in recent years, though the incidents remain relatively rare compared with the number of people who fly each year.<\/p>\n
The FAA says airlines have reported more than 1,200 unruly passenger incidents so far this year.<\/p>\n
O’Lenick and Mejia said they were simply in the right place at the right time when crew members needed help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Another flight headed to Newark has been diverted because of an unruly passenger, marking the second such incident…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344072,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":["post-344071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}