A video has gone viral on TikTok showing a woman duct-taped to her seat, with tape over her mouth, on an American Airlines flight. The woman was secured to her seat after she had an incident with a flight attendant and attempted to open the plane's front door.
American Airlines Flight 1774 traveled from Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, to Charlotte, North Carolina, on Tuesday when the incident occurred.
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TikTok user @lol.ariee used her phone to film the incident as she was deboarding. The woman who was duct-taped to her seat, in first-class no less, has not been identified. In the video, she can be heard yelling at passengers as they deboard the aircraft.
Users in the video's comments asked for more context on what was happening to which the TikTok user responded in a second video saying the commotion began an hour into the two-hour flight.
"All flight attendants were running up and down the aisles, frantically kind of like whispering to each other," she said in the video.
The crew then began locking the bathrooms and grabbing bags from overhead bins, @lol.ariee said. However, the flight attendants would not tell passengers what exactly was happening.
According to @lol.ariee, the pilot eventually spoke to the flight through the intercom system, asking passengers to stay in their seats because of "a bad situation in the plane." Nevertheless, there was no full explanation of what was happening.
"It was just kind of like chaos, and no one knows what's going on," she said.
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A flight attendant sitting by passengers did eventually share what was happening, stating that a woman "had an outburst" and attempted to get off the plane.
"She was saying, 'I need to get off this plane,' and she went up to the exits and started banging on the doors, saying, 'You need to let me off this plane!'" @lol.ariee said.
Throughout the altercation, the woman was biting, spitting, and attacking flight attendants before the crew was forced to take her down and duct-tape her mouth.
At the end of the video, law enforcement and medical personnel were standing by, waiting for everyone else to leave the plane to assist the woman.
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According to an email received by Insider from American Airlines, the woman "attempted to open the forward boarding door and physically assaulted, bit, and caused injury to a flight attendant."
The airline was grateful for their crew on the flight, saying they "Applaud our crew for their professionalism and quick effort to protect those on board."