Retired UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov was removed from a Frontier Airlines flight in Las Vegas over the weekend in a dispute over whether he was willing and able to assist in an emergency while seated in an exit row.
Flight attendants are required to obtain verbal acknowledgement of this from exit row passengers prior to departure, in order to determine whether a passenger is exit row qualified. The standards for this are genuinely de minimis, for instance passengers expected to serve in an emergency are permitted to drink as much alcohol on board as anyone else.
In video recordings shared on social media, the 36-year-old Nurmagomedov can be seen conversing with flight attendants who challenge his eligibility to remain in the emergency exit row. The flight attendant says:
We cannot allow you to sit in the exit row… I am not going to do this back and forth. I’ll go call a supervisor. You can either take a different seat or we can go ahead and escort you off the plane.
Racism pic.twitter.com/cZYoYWiVhg
— Brands (@TheModeAi) January 13, 2025
Nurmagomedov, visibly frustrated, repeatedly insists he is fully capable of helping in an emergency and that he had complied with instructions at check-in. He recounts being asked whether he could understand and speak English before boarding, asserting, “When I was in check-in, they asked me, ‘Do I know English?’ and I said yes. Then why you guys do this?”
The flight crew, however, was not satisfied with his response. A supervisor was called on board, and Nurmagomedov was ultimately told either to switch seats or disembark. He was escorted off the plane. A traveling companion also left the aircraft.
Nurmagomedov expressed confusion over whether the flight crew’s decision to remove him was motivated by misunderstanding, rudeness, or discrimination.
Lady who comes to me with questions was very rude from the very beginning, even though I speak very decent English and can understand everything and agreed to assist, she still insists on removing me from my seat. What was the base for that, racial, national or other one, I’m not sure..But after 2 minutes of conversation, she called security and I was deplaned from this aircraft. After 1.5 hour, I boarded another airline and left to my destination. I did my best to stay calm and respectful as you can see on the video. But those crew members could do better next time and just be nice with clients.
First of all, I need to clarify that it was @FlyFrontier not AlaskaAir.
Lady who comes to me with questions was very rude from the very beginning, even though I speak very decent English and can understand everything and agreed to assist, she still insists on removing me from my…— khabib nurmagomedov (@TeamKhabib) January 12, 2025
Some reports suggest the UFC Hall of Fame mmeber, who is Muslim, was heading to California to support teammates ahead of UFC 311, scheduled for January 18 in Los Angeles. He retired in 2020 with a perfect 29-0 record and is considered among the greatest mixed martial arts fighters in history.
He took a different flight later in the day, reaching his destination without further incident.
Wow, it’s pretty clear from the video that he speaks English well. He’s also calm and polite.
So, what’s the problem?
Answer: Frontier.
So much for all the lofty talk of ‘de-escalation’ (I know, this was Frontier, but can’t help but think of the recent posts discussing methods at UA/AA).
The reality is that if this wasn’t involving a somewhat ‘famous’ person, it would not have been news. Perhaps, his agent even advised him to ‘do something’ because these days ‘all press is good press’ (probably not, but still, sadly, that’s a thing in this attention-driven influencer bullshit economy which clearly has worked for the returning President).
Also, anyone who has flown before understands that the required verbal acknowledgement while in an Exit row seat is mostly perfunctory. In an emergency, all bets are off. Even the most capable amongst us can forget how to unbuckle their own seatbelts if the shock overwhelms them. ‘But, but.. they said they would assist!’ Yeah, it’s practically meaningless.
He seems perfectly capable for the job and better than most. When I am sitting in the exit row on foreign airlines they don’t ask me if I can understand the local language. This looked like racist profiling. I hope that he sues and gets a great lawyer but I doubt that it will get to that. Frontier will probably apologize and give him a bunch of miles to make it go away.
He is a Russian. Get him out of the country
@TRK… does your request apply to ALL Russians or only the ones you deem unfit?
This incident is excessively overblown. There was a reddit thread with an individual commenting claiming to have been on this flight. According to this alleged first-hand witness, Nurmagomedov, before the recorded incident was wholly non-responsive to the first FA’s questions about performing exit row duties. The initial FA then asked – on three separate occasions – whether Nurmagomedov speaks English without a response.
Assuming the reddit commenter is telling the truth, that’s gonna get you removed from the exit row every single time. In an emergency, I don’t want someone in the exit row whose English is “ok,” just as I wouldn’t want my high-school level Spanish to be in charge of an exit row on, e.g., an Avianca flight in South America. Way too much DEI nonsense going on with people thinking this is racism; give me a break.
@Trk
Is ‘Trk’ short for ‘Turk’ as in Turkey, the country?
*cough* Armenian genocide *cough*
Just checking.
But, where does he stand on Transphobia, is what I would like to know.
LOL
He clearly can speak English and wasn’t saying no. It’s typical Frontier airlines. If you hitch a ride on the back of a chicken truck don’t be surprised when you smell like chicken fecal matter at the end.
I haven’t seen the Reddit thread but my first reaction on reading this was that he probably ignored the FA. They’re required to get an acknowledgement, it didn’t come. When he later found out he shouldn’t have ignored them the decision had already been made.
Law says follow crew instructions and law says respond with a verbal YES. He didn’t, so he moves.
That he can argue with the flight attendant in English is sign enough that he understands English adequately to know what the pilots or crew say during an emergency.
Just because someone has a heavy foreign accent in English doesn’t mean they don’t understand English.
Too many FAs on US airlines racist profile when it comes to the emergency exit row seats. I’ve seen it so many times on Barbie jets in particular when the FAs on US airlines spend more time looking at perceived “non-European” passengers in the exit row than they do at the perceived “European”/“European-American” passengers in the same row.
hard to know the rights and wrongs of this unless we knew the conversation. In an emergency evacuation, exit row pax must be able to understand instructions in English. Why did the F/A not get another pax to switch seats, rather than deplane a fare paying pax??