LOS ANGELES — An unruly passenger aboard a Breeze Airways flight headed to Los Angeles Wednesday caused such a scene that passengers had to help subdue him, and the plane had to divert to an airport in Colorado.
The unruly passenger was waving a skateboard, got into an altercation with flight attendants and other passengers and broke free of his restraints twice, according to the airline and local authorities.
The passenger was heard using racist slurs and refusing to cooperate.
“Why am I here after 7:45 p.m.? I’m going to tell you why. This Tony Hawk wannabe from Outer Banks, North Carolina, with a skateboard had too many Bloody Marys this morning,” passenger PK Mackey told Eyewitness News after landing in Los Angeles.
Breeze Airways Flight 704, which took off from Norfolk, Virginia, at 9:17 a.m. Wednesday, landed in Grand Junction, Colorado.
The Grand Junction Police Department said in a statement it responded to the airport there about 11:15 a.m. local time after receiving a report that an “intoxicated male passenger became agitated, yelling racist slurs at airline staff while waving a skateboard.”
Flight crew and passengers apparently twice tried to restrain that passenger and both times he escaped, forcing the flight to be diverted.
In the air traffic control recording, they said, “They’re calling it a level four disturbance now. They say they had him restrained. He broke out, and there’s passengers holding him down now.”
“Approach says the passenger is free and he’s using what they were trying to restrain him with as a weapon.”
A flight attendant is heard in a video saying, “Is there any person that can help me out?”
That is when a man, who fellow passengers called the “linebacker in 17C” grabbed the unruly passenger and forced him to his seat.
“He just got up and sat him down in the seat like a little kid,” passenger Jeff Hankerson said.
That passenger, whose name is Ray, said that once he heard they needed help, he had to intervene.
“My son was on there and there were other kids on there, and so I just had to sit him down,” Ray said. “Once I heard the flight attendants say ‘Can somebody help me?’ I was just like, I saw black almost, and I just grabbed him and sat him down.”
The airline, citing reports from crew who were on board the flight, said there was a physical altercation that resulted in minor injuries to one passenger and a flight attendant.
However, the police said no reports of assault or injuries to passengers or the flight crew were made to the law enforcement.
After the plane landed in Colorado, the passenger was taken into custody by Grand Junction police at the direction of the FBI and taken to the Mesa County Detention Facility.
Breeze Airways does not fly from Grand Junction to Los Angeles. The airline only has flights from that airport to Santa Ana, Las Vegas, Hartford and Salt Lake City.
The crew apparently timed out for the day and couldn’t fly until Thursday morning, leaving the rest of the passengers stuck in Colorado for hours.
Almost eight hours after their scheduled arrival time, the weary passengers arrived in Los Angeles.
“Thank God for linebacker 17C, because he really saved the day,” Mackey said.
“That was crazy,” passenger Angel Hankerson said when she landed in L.A. “I didn’t expect that to happen. You never really think that would happen to you until it happens.”
As for the hero, he said he did play football in high school in Watts and was a defensive end and a tight end.
Airlines have reported more than 1,000 incidents involving unruly passengers so far in 2025, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
ABC News contributed to this report.
NOTE:A previous version of this report erroneously said Breeze Airways does not operate out of Grand Junction. It has since been corrected.
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