Man accused of assaulting United Airlines crew allegedly told fellow passengers: ‘This is a simulation’
A shadow boxing passenger is behind bars after his antics caused a United Airlines flight to make an emergency landing at an Omaha airfield on Sunday.
Jordan Robert Langston, 25, was ordered to be held in jail by a judge pending trial over concerns about his mental health and possible substance abuse problems, reports the Lincoln Journal Star.
According to documents in the case, Langston is accused of walking to the front of the plane mid-flight to declare to his fellow passengers: ”This is a simulation.”
The flight was bound for Salt Lake City after leaving Washington D.C. earlier in the day.
Langston repeated his statements and told the crew that “the flight” was a simulation. During the incident, he stepped on an attendant’s foot and pushed another person.
Another attendant warned him that if his behavior continued, the flight would head back to the capital. Langston then repeated his “simulation” claims, authorities say.
FBI Special Agent Patrick Manion wrote in the complaint that the captain initiated a level 2 security threat but planned to continue to Utah.
However, 30 minutes later, the suspect once again rose from his seat, this time to “shadow box” in the aisle. At which point he punched a member of the crew in the face, Manion said.
Passengers then apprehended Manion and forced him to the back of the plane, where he was placed in plastic handcuffs and restrained. He continued to rant about death, Manion added. The captain decided to divert the flight to Omaha, landing shortly afterwards.
Langson was removed from the plane, which then continued to Salt Lake City.
It’s been a challenging year for United Airlines and its passengers.
In January, a United passenger claimed in a viral Reddit post that they were told to give up their seat for a service dog.
The “enormous” canine was “way too big to fit on the floor,” the passenger wrote. When the passenger approached a flight attendant about the animal in her seat, the flight attendant allegedly shrugged.
In August, a United flight was delayed for four hours when a passenger was accused of smoking weed on a Cancun-bound flight out of San Francisco.
In October, a Rome-bound flight from Washington, D.C. turned around after a passenger lost his laptop on board.
The laptop was turned on and fell “behind a cabin wall panel and through a small gap leading to the cargo hold”, where it could not be accessed, said the airline. The device’s lithium-ion battery posed a safety risk.
Earlier this month, a TikTok user captured a United passenger’s foul-mouthed meltdown.
The viral incident unfolded on the tarmac at Newark Liberty International Airport and ended with the passenger being removed from the plane, according to a November 10 TikTok video.
“This woman went absolutely nuts and we had to return back to the gate to remove her,” the passenger who took the video wrote in the caption.
