Woman left New Orleans-Dallas flight for mask refusal | Crime / Police

A woman was forcibly removed by police from an American Airlines flight at Louis Armstrong International Airport after refusing to wear a mask or leave the plane, officials said on Saturday.

“I’ve never seen anything like it before,” said Patrick Maney, a retired history professor at Tulane University, who was also on the plane. “Two heavily armed policemen came and told the lady to come down. She refused, and then they told her to stand up. She was screaming and resisting as they pulled her up and put some sort of strain on her. his hands behind his back. “

The incident occurred on American Airlines flight 1768, which was scheduled to depart for Dallas Fort Worth International Airport on Friday just after 9:30 a.m. but was delayed nearly an hour by the mask affair. It is a flight that usually includes many passengers making connections to other destinations.

His dismissal came the day after a similar, widely publicized incident at John F. Kennedy International Airport before an American Airlines flight to Miami. In it, a man refusing to wear his mask was forced to leave the plane after a two-hour standoff with police.

US spokesman Derek Walls confirmed the incident to Armstrong International and the delay on Saturday. He said the jet was due to return to the gate after the customer refused multiple requests for a mask.

Even after being abducted, Maney said, the woman could be heard screaming for about 10 minutes as MPs held her on the gangway until the plane took off again. He said the passenger didn’t seem to be making a political comment, “but she kept saying she wasn’t an animal and didn’t want to be treated like an animal, things like that” .

Other passengers expressed frustration with the delay, Maney said, and he and his wife barely made their connecting flight to San Jose, Calif.

Captain Jason Rivarde, a spokesperson for the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office, said MPs arrested a female passenger on Friday around 10 a.m. for refusing to get off a plane after several requests to do so. He said they cited her for four felonies: disturbing public order, staying in a place after being banned, resisting arrest and simple assault.

In January, the Federal Aviation Administration introduced a zero tolerance order under which unruly airline passengers can face federal criminal charges or fines of up to $ 35,000.

Earlier this month, the FAA said incidents related to masks appeared to be increasing sharply. Airlines have reported more than 3,200 of the dust since the start of 2021, about half of that since early May, when passenger travel began to increase in line with coronavirus vaccination rates.

The FAA said 75% of passenger complaints filed by airlines this year were related to the mask and that it had imposed nearly $ 700,000 in penalties on non-compliant passengers.

A federal law in force since February makes it compulsory to wear a mask on commercial flights. Failure to do so is punishable by a fine of $ 250 for the first offense and up to $ 1,500 for repeat offenses.

The law was due to expire in mid-May, but the Transportation Security Administration extended the application until September 13 amid a new wave of COVID-19 cases, mainly due to the powerful delta strain of the virus and slower vaccination rates.

Before masks were made compulsory by law, airlines had to address provocative passengers by banning them from flights.