A pair of women who run a YouTube channel and were hoping to get more followers were thrown off an American Airlines flight on Friday after their prank attempt was easily discovered.
According to an account by a fellow passenger as told to the great blog ‘View From The Wing,’ one of the women was sitting in coach and tried to move into first-class by hiding under her friend’s seat. The Boeing 777-200 plane being used for the flight between Dallas and Miami has a small space under the seat and the television console when the seat is reclined.
But, the eyewitness told the blog, the plane was completely full. After the flight attendants dutifully did their check and the plane began to taxi away from the gate, it was discovered that a seat in coach was empty and only a purse was left behind. Passengers around where the woman was sitting in coach told flight attendants she had gotten up from her seat when there was a 90-minute delay earlier after a catering truck bumped into the plane’s cargo door.
After initially not responding to an announcement to identify herself – hoping to remain where she was for the entire flight for a social media stunt – the woman finally obliged after the captain announced it was a security issue and said the plane couldn’t take off unless she was found. And before the eyewitness said he would turn her in.
Then all hell broke loose.
The woman hiding under the seat began to scream that she was being disrespected, paid for her coach seat and wanted to go back and that she had a child at home. Nonetheless, she was removed from the flight and her accomplice friend was also removed, also screaming in protest.
Think it’s over?
Nope.
In the meantime, another passenger in coach unrelated to the incident in first-class begins yelling at flight attendants because of the delay. He also got booted and the police dragged him off. All told, between the initial delay and the return to the gate in Dallas to remove passengers, the flight ran nearly three hours late.
You can listen to more about the rise of naughty passengers on our TravelPulse Podcast.
