Unruly airline passenger earns himself a pair of handcuffs with pre-flight gin and tonic tantrum

An unruly passenger who threw a fit over being denied a gin and tonic on an American Airlines flight and then refused to exit before it took off was hauled off the plane in handcuffs by security, weeping and mewling “like a 5-year-old.”

The first-class passenger reportedly requested a pre-flight cocktail but was denied which caused him to pitch a tantrum.

The unnamed man was repeatedly asked by the crew to get off the plane and he refused. It was predictable that the altercation would end badly for him. What wasn’t expected was the meltdown and tears that followed.

The video comes from Reddit and the entire thing is almost five and a half minutes of embarrassment for the passenger. It went viral immediately.

It shows the man arguing with airport personnel and other passengers telling him to get off the plane. The staff tried to coax him into leaving, telling the man that the pilot had asked that he be removed “multiple times.”

According to the travel blog “View from the Wing,” the passenger asked what he had done to warrant being removed from the flight. Two men who looked like officers informed him that he was “not being respectful” by “arguing with the flight attendant.”

The reason the man was denied a pre-departure beverage is unclear. Nerd Wallet states that it is a perk on American Airlines in first-class.

In the video, passengers can be heard yelling at the man to get off the aircraft while he sits there refusing to budge. He proceeded to pull out his phone to record the incident and had it taken from him.

After unsuccessfully trying to convince the man to leave on his own accord, officers can be seen trying to wrangle him out of his seat. Then they dragged him into the aisle after forcefully yanking him out of it. The man started yelling “Stop!” as they continued to drag him away. Officers pushed him up against the jet bridge wall and handcuffed him as he wept and then fell to the floor, losing a tennis shoe in the process.

The video was posted on Reddit in the forum “r/PublicFreakout.” According to the New York Post, it has had over 33,000 votes and more than 4,000 comments. Many of those comments thrashed the passenger over the altercation. They were not kind.

“The whining like a 5-year-old and the jumpy flailing certainly surprised me lmao,” one person noted.

“I did not expect him to start weeping like that! What a man-child!” another viewer declared.

“When his shoe came off, it reminded me of my 5-year-old nephew when he doesn’t want to take a nap but is clearly tired,” someone else stated.

“I have never seen a more embarrassing display in my entire career,” another person commented.

“I want my mommy! And also a gin and tonic!” snarked another individual on Reddit.

“Seriously. I have no idea why these people always try to keep arguing when police show up. You’re not going to be able to sway them or talk your way out of it,” another user said. “You can either walk off or get dragged off after wasting the rest of the passengers’ time.”

The passenger asked the officer if he had committed a “crime.” In the eyes of the US Department of Transportation, that doesn’t matter. Airlines can deny boarding or remove a passenger if the reason is due to “safety, security or health risk, or due to a behavior that is considered obscene, disruptive or otherwise unlawful.”

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