U.S. man charged in plane punchup
TOKYO— An American man who took part in a fist fight on a flight about to leave Tokyo for Los Angeles has been charged with assaulting an airline official, authorities said Wednesday.
Video of the fight, taken by a passenger, has been widely circulated online. In it, a man wearing a red Hawaiian-style shirt punches a man in a black T-shirt, who fights back and then shouts: “Go to hell. This guy is crazy!”
Later, the man in the red shirt returns, more punches are exchanged, and a passenger can be heard pleading: “Hey guys, stop it. Get off this plane!”
A flight attendant tried to break up the fight as passengers looked on or moved out of the way. The fight occurred Monday on Air Nippon Airways Flight 6, or NH6, aboard a Boeing 777 that was about to embark on an 11-hour journey to Los Angeles International Airport from Narita International Airport outside Tokyo.
Michihiko Aoi, a police official at Narita, said Wednesday evening that “a man of American nationality in his 40s was taken off NH6, as he had flown into a rage and caused trouble on the plane.” The man was drunk, he added.
Aoi’s statement continued: “Today, we received several phone inquiries from the news media asking about the video taken inside the plane. The man was not charged over the incident recorded inside the plane, but because of the violence he inflicted on the ANA official, causing scratches on his forehead.
“We can’t comment on the video as we don’t know who took it, and also there are other people appearing in it,” Aoi added. “He was seen in the video, but we cannot confirm which one he is, or which colour shirt he wore.”
The passenger who recorded the video, Corey Hour, an Arizona-based photographer and cinematographer, has told CNN, the Washington Post and other news organizations that the man in the red shirt had started the fight.
“He literally just flipped,” Hour told the Post, adding that the man in the red shirt had threatened to kill the other man. “Nobody knows why.”
Hour told CNN, “The flight attendants actually got caught up in the mix and that’s when the video ends, as I put my phone down and I actually got in the middle of everyone and confronted him.”
Violence on planes has drawn more attention since last month, when police officers dragged a passenger off an overbooked United flight in the United States after he refused to surrender his seat. Since then, American Airlines suspended aflight attendant after an altercation over a baby stroller, and a video appeared to show a Delta Air Lines pilot slapping a passenger in an effort to break up a fight.