A man facing charges of interfering with a flight crew could potentially face 20 years in prison if convicted. Keith Edward Fagiana is accused of punching a flight attendant and later kicking a police officer in the groin and spitting on other officers who were trying to remove him off the plane.
Fagiana was on board an American Airlines flight on January 3 from Fort Worth, Texas to Bozeman, Montana. But because of the incident, the flight landed in Amarillo instead.
Passenger Could Face 20 Years in Prison
According to a flight attendant, another passenger complained that Fagiana was kicking their seat. The flight attendant requested Fagiana to stop, but he swore at him and punched him in the body. He then stood up and punched him three more times. That’s when the attendant and other passengers on board restrained the man and placed him in flex cuffs.
In an affidavit, an FBI agent claims that Fagiana spat at officers and even kicked one while they were putting steel cuffs on. And because he was spitting on the officers, they had to put a “spitting mask” on him.
Fagiana claimed that he didn’t remember anything about the incident on the flight. The agent wrote that Fagiana “admitted he had drunk some ‘Captain Morgans,’” which is a rum served at bars before the flight.
The incident was captured by another passenger on video. The flight attendant told the man hitting him “Stop, stop, stop. What the (expletive) are you doing?”
Misbehaving Passengers
While the number of unruly passengers decreased significantly, airlines reported more than 2,000 cases of unruly passengers to the Federal Aviation Administration. During its peak in 2021, there were 6,000 cases of unruly passengers reported by carriers.
One of the worst cases of misbehaving passengers was a California woman who was sentenced to 15 months in prison. She was also ordered to pay $26,000 in restitution after punching a Southwest flight attendant in the mouth breaking her teeth.