A man and a woman who allegedly refused to wear their masks properly on a JetBlue flight were filmed verbally abusing staff as they were escorted off the plane.
The incident took place on a flight from Fort Lauderdale, Florida to San Diego, California earlier this week, but footage has since been shared widely online after a fellow passenger filmed the episode.
Sharing the video to Instagram, a woman named Alice said the chaos began when a flight attendant asked the woman to fix her son’s mask before getting on the plane, which she apparently didn’t. She also said that the woman and her husband “had their masks on off the nose the whole time”.
Recalling the situation to ABC 10 News, Alice said: “Her husband walked down the aisle to the outside of the plane. Then this whole mess just started happening. When he came back, he just started yelling at the flight attendant.”
Footage of the incident begins with the man, who did not appear to be wearing a mask at all at the time, shouting and swearing at one of the flight attendants.
Then, as the flight attendant appears to reach out towards the man, he angrily pushes his hand back, saying “how f***ing dare you?”, causing another worker to intervene.
The angry passenger then goes on a foul-mouthed rant, saying he has waited “four f***ing hours” for the flight and that he was only given “one warning” to pull his mask up – which he claims he did “the second he (the flight attendant) said something”.
He then goes on to describe the situation as “f***ing bull***” and tells them flight attendant to “get me my s***”, presumably when he tells him to leave the aircraft.
Later in the clip, the woman can be seen heading towards the exit of the plane and stops to talk to fellow passengers, pulling down her mask in the process.
She tells fellow passengers that her son’s mask had briefly fallen off his face before the adults “apologised and fixed it”. But she claims the alleged move “wasn’t good enough” for the flight attendants.
“Now they’re kicking us off and we don’t know why,” she goes on.
As she walks away, and people keep filming, she adds: “Let it go viral. We’re going to sue.”
Turning then to a staff member, she then says:“Everyone I know’s an attorney”.
After the woman gets off the plane, the man continues shouting and swearing. “I respect your rules. ‘I’m not the type of guy… I’m a vaccinated person. You gave me one warning!” he rants.
The video finishes with the man ordering the flight attendant to “turn around and face everybody”, but some of the other passengers respond by heckling him and shouting: “Get off the plane!”
When he is finally off, some of the remaining passengers break into cheers and applause.
JetBlue has since said that the customers will not be allowed to fly JetBlue in the future.
According to JetBlue, the couple were asked multiple times to properly wear their masks before take-off but they would not comply with the federal mask mandate.
“For reference, crew members are trained to speak to customers who are not following policies. If a customer refuses to wear a face mask after being asked, crew members will work to de-escalate the situation to the best of their ability to gain compliance prior to removal.
“The safety of each customer and crew member is our first priority, and we must work together to follow the federal mask mandate during the travel journey.”