Unruly passenger forces local flight to divert moments before takeoff

Dayton Police were called to Dayton International Airport on Tuesday evening in regards to a disorderly passenger on an American Airlines flight, causing the flight to be diverted.

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Once at the gate, police were pointed to a 32-year-old woman who had refused to deboard the plane after she was asked to. Police asked her what had happened.

“She advised the plane was delayed and she was asleep in her seat. She woke up and believed she had arrived at her destination, but was still in Dayton,” a Dayton Police incident report stated. “She stated she asked the flight attendant for a drink but was denied.”

The woman also said she missed her connecting flight and had to cancel her flight to her final destination.

Later, police learned that a passenger sitting next to the woman on the plane asked to be moved away from her due to her behavior, claiming she was intoxicated and that she refused to hang up the phone and put it on airplane mode while they were taxiing for takeoff, the report stated.

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When the woman was asked to put her phone on airplane mode, she allegedly became “irate.”

The flight’s captain told police he was advised that the woman was not following flight instructions, forcing the plane to return to the gate to get the woman off the flight. When she was asked to deboard the flight, she refused, the report said.

Since she refused to deboard, all passengers were forced to get off the plane.

Police were finally able to get the woman off the plane and worked with her to rebook her flights for the next day.

While speaking with the woman, an officer noted a “strong odor of alcohol on her breath” and that her “attitude would fluctuate up and down.”

“There were no other contributing factors that led me to believe she was intoxicated at the moment,” an officer wrote in the report.

News Center 7 checked and have not seen any charges filed in connection to the incident.

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