Tired of reading stories about flight attendants duct-taping unruly passengers to their seats?
So was Alfredo Rivera, according to the latest viral video about this crafty weapon of choice among US cabin crew members.
Footage of Rivera, who claims to be a Frontier Airlines flight attendant, recounting his run-in with a badly behaved passenger has been doing the rounds online following footage emerging of 22-year-old Maxwell Berry taped to his seat on a flight from Philadelphia to Miami on 31 July.
“Now understand something. I’m a flight attendant. That means I attend the flights,” Rivera said at the start of the video.
“Sometimes our job has us attending to crazy people. If you push us too far, you’re going to have to attend this ass-whooping.”
Unfortunately, this is not footage of a real flight attendant, but the work of comedian and YouTuber James Bates, also known as The Real Spark.
Rivera (Bates) said in the clip that he was sitting in the jump seat looking at the “damn fool” when the trouble began.
“He’s spitting and cussing and going crazy. I said, “That’s enough”. I got up and I walked over there,” he said.
“This man smelled like a pack of Marlboro cigarettes, four shots of Everclear alcohol and regret — so I know something’s about to go down.”
When Rivera showed the passenger a roll of duct tape, he said the man began to get scared.
“[The passenger] started stuttering, ‘Hold up, wait a minute, something ain’t right.’ I said, “Yeah, we’re about to m-m-m-m-m-m-m-mummify your ass now, boy.’
“So, we wrapped him up better than any Christmas present you ever seen.
“He won’t be coming on no more Frontier flights at all.”
Though the interview is fake, the incident was real.
According to The New York Times, Berry groped two flight attendants and punched another in the face, prompting the crew to duct tape him to his seat for the remainder of the flight.
Frontier Airlines said the flight attendants involved would be given paid leave while it investigated the incident.
Local police in Miami said Berry had been drinking.
He was filmed by several other passengers yelling that his parents were worth “two million goddamn dollars” and “I’m white. I’m sorry, I can’t change that” according to TMZ.
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Travel Weekly has contacted Frontier Airlines for comment.
Apparently, duct-taping uncontrollable passengers to their seats is having a moment –several other similar videos have emerged this year, mostly taking place on American Airlines flights.
Just days before Berry’s behaviour made headlines, footage emerged of an American Airlines flight attendant seeming to tape an 11-year-old child to a seat during a flight from Maui to Los Angeles.
A witness suggested the child may have had a “developmental disability”.
In July, on another American Airlines flight, footage of a woman duct-taped to her seat surfaced on TikTok.
The airline said the woman had tried to open the forward boarding door and “physically assaulted, bit and caused injury to a flight attendant”.
“For the safety and security of other customers and our crew, the individual was restrained until the flight landed at CLT and could be met by law enforcement and emergency personnel,” the spokesperson said.
Data from the Federal Aviation Administration shows that over the past year, US authorities have received 3,810 reports involving “unruly passengers”, 2,786 of which were mask related.
Featured image source: YouTube/The Real Spark
