United Airlines Passenger Booted From Flight After Racist Rant, Verbally Abusing Crew

A new year, same air rage: just days into 2017, an airline passenger has been kicked off a flight for a reportedly racist rant aimed at his fellow travelers and verbally abusing flight attendants.

An American man on a flight from Sydney, Australia, to San Francisco was filmed insulting two passengers of Asian Indian descent seated on either side of him, The New Zealand Herald reports.

“If you guys treat people right on these things, you see two last names the same, don’t put someone else in the middle of them,” he says to a flight attendant in the video.

He claims he’s not yelling at the flight attendant, saying, “Yelling at you? I’m not yelling. You want to hear me f——g yell?”

When she asks him if he wants her to call the captain and have him turn the plane around, he responds, “Do you know how cool it would be to have the airplane turned around because of me? You are going to do that? You’d do that?” he shouts as she walks away. “I’m being so impolite aren’t I, fat a—.”

That’s where the video cuts off, but a passenger seated near the man told the paper that his rant only got worse from there, cursing various ethnicities and using “offensive” language. Another passenger said that the man also grabbed soda off the cart and demanded beer.

He was subdued when the pilot announced the plane would be diverting to Auckland, New Zealand.

A police spokesman said a 42-year-old man aboard the flight was badly behaved and arrested on arrival before being referred to immigration.

United says the flight was diverted due to a passenger who failed to follow crew instructions, and that all 252 passengers were given hotel accommodations for the night.

“Authorities boarded the aircraft when it landed and the passenger was removed from the aircraft,” a spokesman said, adding that the airline would review the incident but couldn’t give details into the specifics of the passenger’s actions.

“He was refused entry to New Zealand as he did not meet entry and border requirements,” the spokesman told the Herald. “He is now in police custody while arrangements are made for him to board a flight back to the United States.”