‘Fight Club In The Skies’: Brawl Erupts On American Airlines Flight Over Mask Policy

The past months of coronavirus lockdown and social distancing measures have produced some truly bizarre scenes, but perhaps none so strange and potentially dangerous as the brawl that broke out on an American Airlines flight this week.

The incident which happened Monday and was caught on video, reportedly started when a traveler on a Las Vegas to Charlotte flight refused to comply with the airline’s coronavirus protective face mask policy. After a flight attendant ordered the maskless woman to exit the flight, other angry passengers appeared to invervene while the airline called authorities to get a disruptive woman off, and that’s when punches started flying. 

Nothing like a morning Fight Club as tempers flared on @AmericanAir LAS-CLT flight today….So much for social distancing! #AAFightClub @thefatjack pic.twitter.com/NN9lj8enbf

— Caryn Ross (@SuperSassyMama) August 17, 2020

The passenger that uploaded the widely shared video said, “Nothing like a morning Fight Club as tempers flared on American Air LAS-CLT flight today.”

“So much for social distancing!” the eyewitness added. Onlookers could be seen getting increasingly frustrated that the belligerent woman in the pink shirt was causing a significant flight delay due to the incident.

Security was called in and escorted the women off the plane, but the latest in a series of ‘mask vs. maskless’ tense encounters over this bizarre summer of COVID-19 social distancing measures. 

The full three-and-a-half minute video of the ordeal shows a woman standing in the aisle arguing another while airline personnel are nowhere in sight, followed by the moment fists go flying. A man in row behind also later joins in the melee.

An American Airlines official statement on the incident later said, “On Monday, a customer on American Airlines Flight 1665 with service from Las Vegas to Charlotte failed to comply with our mandatory face-covering policy after boarding the aircraft prior to departure.”

It continued: “In accordance with our policy, the customer was subsequently asked to leave the aircraft and became disruptive, resulting in an altercation with other passengers.”