Passenger Rushes Past Gate Agent, Declares Himself the FBI

by Gary Leff

American Airlines flight AA1060 from Miami to Newark was delayed about three and a half hours today when a man “ran onto the plane screaming that it was his plane and he’s FBI.”

Via @AriTeman, Passengers in first class blocked the man from getting deeper into the aircraft. Security was called to remove him.

The Captain made an announcement, going farther than he should have and likely speculating baselessly, that they “think the guy was a decoy to distract from something else.” Everyone was offloaded and passengers and bags were searched.

Police tackled the intruder outside the flight’s departure gate D3 “and had to fight him hard to get him cuffed.”

According to American Airlines, “During the boarding process of American Airlines flight 1060 from Miami to Newark, a ticketed passenger for that flight ran on the jet bridge, bypassing the gate agent. Law enforcement was summoned, who removed the passenger.” The man was involuntarily hospitalized after being taken from the airport.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  3. Wow. Normally you’d expect that kind of urgency from someone wanting to leave New Jersey.

  5. Was on this flight in row 1 this morning. It was complete chaos, FA waited way too long to call the police and she relied on passengers to restrain him while she was hiding behind other passengers (she asked first class pax to help form a blockade…) She also told the captain to go back and hide in the cockpit and close the door…total mess.

  7. In the 1960’s, there was a popular TV show, FBI, which is different from the current CBS TV show of the same name. In the old FBI show of the 1960’s, a common way for the episode to end was the crook was confronted by the FBI from about 50 feet away;

    FBI: (yelling) HOLD IT, FBI
    crook: (fires gun at them..bang)
    FBI: (returns fire, bang, bang)
    crook: (falls to the ground).

    They kept using variations of that every week. Lesson: surrender to the FBI. Don’t shoot at them when told to surrender.

  8. Soo strange how all these people who are mentally unstable are composed and raise no red flags when they go past TSA checkpoints yet the second they get to the plane they freak out. Or maybe just maybe TSA sees these problem people but don’t want to be bothered and rather put everybody else’s safety at risk later on. You can’t do anything with the crowd that pops pills and mixes with alcohol in mid-flight, but there is no way this guy was acting normal going through security.

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