Passengers Forced To Deplane After Woman In MAGA Hat Refuses To Wear Mask, Uses Racial Epithet

Two women flying Frontier Airlines from Seattle to Denver three weeks ago caused every passenger on board to deplane when they refused to properly wear masks, as the airline requires.

One of the woman, wearing a MAGA hat, told a passenger getting off the plane to “have a good day” followed by a derogatory epithet for African Americans, while her friend in a blue Trump hat ate an apple. (I refuse to play hangman with readers and call it “the n-word”).

The pilot had just announced,

The two passengers who we need to remove from the airplane are refusing to do that. We can resolve this easily but at this point I have to ask everyone to leave the airplane. Take your IDs and your boarding passes. You can leave your personal belongings if you’re gonna reboard. Please do not get involved in the altercation or you will not reboard.

The women stayed at their seats, “smiling and making peace signs.” Police officers arrived and took the two women off the plane, while other passengers cheered.

@alexbarkley4

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♬ original sound – Alex Barkley

Frontier Airlines confirms that both women have been banned from the airlne.

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

  1. There is no excuse for these women to behave this way and they should have been removed. I wonder if they have mental issues? Using racial slurs is never acceptable although I’m not sure if it was directed at a flight member or another passenger but unacceptable regardless. I think some of this is coming from people being tired of the shutdowns and the mask requirements. Just crazy behavior though.

  2. If the plane was delayed as a result, they should be fined enough to compensate each passenger $100 per hour (and $100 as a minimum). Enough of this nonsense.

  3. “Cause” has a formal definition that isn’t used correctly here. The women were at fault for the incident but did not cause everyone to deplane. That outcome was the result of the pilot’s decision.

  4. @Seth, that sort of fine could bankrupt the passengers, who don’t appear to be very wealthy to begin with. Your suggestion would ruin their livelihood.

  5. @ Gary — Thanks for the reminder to never fly Frontier — not because of the passengers, but because of the obviously horrible seats.

  6. Weird. Gary never ever mentions any absurd behavior by those who happen to be wearing any pro-Biden/Obama/Clinton…etc. attire. Either there are no loonies on the left who ever behave badly or Gary is just your average TDS lefty who childishly and hypocritically only sees bad behavior when it comes from the right. And obviously it’s the latter.
    Gonna be fascinating to see what Gary and his ilk do with their advanced cases of TDS after Trump leaves office. Who are they going to blame all the world’s problems on? lol

  7. I’m surprised Frontier didn’t see this as “on-board entertainment” and charge all the other passengers an extra $50 for the floor show…

  8. @brady – don’t worry. Even after Trump leaves, Mitch will be here to compromise functional democracy for stimulus checks.

  9. @Brady, I had no idea you had such a great sense of humor!

    “pro-Biden/Obama/Clinton…”Who the **** wears Clinton “attire”? And why stop there? What about “attire” from Carter, JFK, Roosevelt??? And why should you stop at Trump? What about Bush 43? 41? Reagan? Hell, Nixon! Ever stop to think that the *only* ones not wearing masks are Trump supporters? Ever think there might be another reason for folks misbehaving onboard aircraft — like simply being ***holes?

    Well, then again, guess who made NOT wearing masks a political statement?

  10. @brady please point me to the stories I’ve missed, even better share them with me by email when they’re happening – would love to get on it!

  11. Oh Gary
    What are you going to do when Trump’s gone later this month? Also Frontier’s seats are like sitting on metal bleachers.

  12. @brady is running low on oxygen and is sucking CO2. Too bad no one is willing to show him how to turn the valve.

  13. Staged.
    We all know Trump supporters don’t live in Seattle or Denver, only the left wing nutters.

  14. Wow, I’m shocked….someone with a MAGA hat that’s racist and doesn’t think wearing a mask to protect others is important??? …….I guess since there are people out there that think Trump, Sydney Powell and Lin Wood are right and everyone else is wrong I should clarify that I was being sarcastic.

    The reason you don’t see articles about people with Biden hat’s acting like a self centered racist idiot on an airplane is because it doesn’t happen. Not all trumpies are maskholes but the vast majority of people refusing to wear a mask seem to support Trump……..no other president has ever galvanized racist, angry conspiracy believers into a single coalition like Trump has.

  15. I should clarify I’m not a far left whacko…..I’m actually sad to see the Republican party devolve and the loss of a voice that promotes strong businesses , protects from over reaching regulations and stood for old fashion things like honesty, integrity and decency and protected democracy and our Constitution, not undermined it.

  16. Jason, what definition of “cause” would you say is the correct one that means these passengers didn’t cause the other passengers to have to leave the plane? The majority of the dictionary definitions I have found would apply here, and even legal terms like proximate cause likely would as well.

  17. Easy solution. Have the police board the plane and arrest the morons. 5-10 minutes all in.
    another few minutes to take care of Jason and Brady. easy peasy!

  18. Gary, should have wrote about the video in New York the other day about the white lady getting her bmw suv DESTROYED in the middle of the day on a New York street. A group of _______ teenagers doing what they do for fun, did you see all the yelling and cheering! Although by now I’m sure Facebook, utube have removed it , disinformation you know.

  19. @Al – that dumb crap didn’t happen on a plane. This useless podunk MAGA garbage did. See the difference there? Can you?

  20. I may be an outlier, but softening the word by censoring it does not help the targets of its use. “Racial-epithet”. “N-word”.
    It still carries the same meaning as the original word. After all, we all make the connection anyways.

    Print all 6 letters of the word so readers are forced to read it and see it’s ugliness.

  21. JUST FYI…I would simply like to point out that there are TWO Jason’s in this thread. There is me — whose name appears with a picture — and the *other* one without a picture.

    One of us posted comments beginning with 1) “I’m surprised Frontier didn’t see this as ‘on-board entertainment’…”, and 2) “@Brady, I had no idea you had such a great sense of humor!”

    One of us (me) is a proud, liberal Democrat. The other, not so much…

  22. @UA-NYC: Sadly, I fear you are correct.

    @John W: The proud party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt — even Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan! — has devolved into a party of racism. These Presidents are “spinning in their graves” at what Trump has done to the GOP: Make Racism Great Again. (I was tempted to say Make Apartheid Great Again, but fortunately that was never an *official* policy of the US government.)

    The legacy of Trump is to make it OK to hate again. Even if one believes the election was “stolen” — it wasn’t — but even if one believes that, at what point do you look at Trump and realize he’s simply bat-sh*t crazy???

    @Gary — Can we get back to talking about travel? (And can you change my name from Jason to JBL to avoid any confusion with the other guy?)

  23. Thanks for the Newsroom clip. That was funny. Never seen the show before but I might check it out.

    Why can’t we just drag off the individuals? Really, what is the point of all those fancy tools on police belts? Too bad we’ve neutered the cops.

  24. No Republican in any position of significance or responsibility has condoned not wearing a mask when indoors and within 6’ of others.

    There have been other viral videos of mask violations involving persons statistically unlikely to be Republicans.

    To link any of these violations to any party or demographic group is irresponsible, divisive, and harmful to discourse.

  25. @ Shirley Kroot – That is a pretty awful thing to say. While I’ve had it and it was no big deal I don’t wish any illness on anyone, let alone someone that has done nothing to me. Did these two idiots create any issues for you?

  26. @OneXMarine – when any idiots refuse to wear masks they create issues for EVERYONE, to the tune of 350,000+ deaths to date. Not understanding this basic fact is the problem!

  27. @ Edison – I don’t believe that masks do much if anything to control the spread of COVID and I don’t believe the numbers. I think they are inflated for $$$. That being said I do wear a mask when I enter stores, hair salons, restaurants, etc. and I stand on the circles on the floor, and I still contracted COVID as did my wife and daughter. I don’t believe it but I don’t want to cause issues for the small business owners that are struggling. That being said you shouldn’t wish an illness on another human being. I would guess these two people have enough problems without an illness being added. Their behavior was not rational which tells me that they probably have something going on between their ears that none of us want to suffer from.

  28. Gary, there is no point in referencing MAGA hats other than to clumsily make a political statement. What’s relevant is their behavior, not their attire. Were the situation reversed and the person had on Biden/Harris attire, you wouldn’t mention it. Stop being political. That’s not why I visit the site.

  29. Bigjohnierock and the racist Jason above are just upset that in 16 days their racist president who mocks the disabled and grabs women by their genitals is out! The Klan also mourns his defeat

  30. @OneXMarine —> “I don’t believe that masks do much if anything to control the spread of COVID and I don’t believe the numbers…”

    This is EXACTLY WHY we have (approximately) 25% of all the world’s Covid-19 CASES are in the United States. (20.5 million cases in the US vs. 85 million for the entire world — NOTE: all numbers are rounded, and taken from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center; https://coronavirus.jhu.edu), and 20% of the Covid-19 DEATHS. (1.8 million in the world vs. 351,000 in the US.).

    Oh, right…you don’t believe the numbers. I forgot. “Fake News?” I’ll confess I never believed the Pentagon’s “5 O’Clock Follies” during Vietnam when they’d claim that 50k soldiers from the NVA and VC were killed last week either.

  31. @Michael Feldman — “No Republican in any position of significance or responsibility has condoned not wearing a mask when indoors and within 6’ of others.”

    Excuse me? How many GOP governors have said in 2020 you don’t need to wear a mask, that there’s no need for a mask mandate, etc., etc.? What sort of message does it send to the public when the President (you may debate his level of responsibility, I suppose, but I would think being the President of the United States of America is a position of significance!) tells a reporter to take off his mask, or ridicules Jeanine Piro as being “politically correct” when she appeared at a Trump rally wearing a mask?

    Short-term memory issues, or a deliberate effort to forget the craziness?

  32. @Jack Johnson — Think back to the days of the Swine Flu, the H1N1 influenza virus, or the SARS pandemic. Oh, heck, think back to 2001, the George Bush (43) administration in the days post-9/11 — how many passengers refused to comply with instructions from the air crew, were escorted off the aircraft, and spewed epithets at black individuals as they left?

    No, Jack, the Trump Administration — whether deliberate for not — has made it OK to hate…and the nation is worse for that.

  33. @ Jason Brandt Lewis – Look snowflake, don’t take my post out of context. I said I don’t believe in the masks or the numbers but I do what the CDC asks and wear my mask and social distance and still got COVID. If you’re that afraid crawl back under mommies skirt until all of this is over.

  34. @OneXMarine —> Since when are insults called for? Did I insult you? Call you names? Now, in point of fact, I haven’t lived where it snows in 60+ years, and my mother has been dead for 15 years, so I have no snowflakes nor skirts to crawl under…unless you count my wife, but — unlike Mike Pence — I don’t refer to her as “Mommy” or “Mother.”

    You still got Covid — and I’m very glad that you’ve recovered from it — because masks are not a 100% guarantee of immunity. No one has *ever* suggested they were, either. The highest figure I can recall seeing off the top of my head is something like 70% effective, and *more* effective at preventing *you* from passing it on rather than preventing a possible infection.

    I, too, wear a mask whenever I leave the house and — guess what — I *haven’t* been infected with Covid. I would say masks work.

    Over three dozen of my friends have been infected, and four have died. I have no idea whether they were wearing masks or not.

    Trump didn’t wear a mask; got infected. Chris Christie didn’t wear a mask, and got infected. (Mind you, he’s encouraging everyone to mask up now; Trump is not.) I have not have any statistics to back this up, but my gut feeling is that more people who didn’t wear masks were infected than people who did. Certainly polls have shown more Republicans / Trump voters believe Covid wasn’t as big a threat as media was making it out to be; more Democrats / Biden voters believe it’s a huge and significant threat. And certainly more people at Democratic political rallies — regardless of the candidate — were filmed/videotaped wearing masks than those attending GOP rallies.

    And I *do* thank you and respect you for your service. Any and all insults are forgiven.

  35. @oneXmarine. I thank you for following the suggestions of most scientific research and wearing your mask. But just because you did, can you guarantee everyone in your circle was was so conscious.

  36. @ Jason Brandt Lewis – You said that because I don’t believe in masks and the numbers that is the reason why the infection rate and death rate is so high. Even the CDC and WHO can’t get their story straight. Dr. Fauci says that we don’t really need masks and then that we need masks. He says that we need 50% herd immunity then 70% then 90% then 75 – 80% and now back to 90%.

    Are you naive enough to believe that the government won’t lie to you to get you to do as they please? All governments lie to their people and they have since the start of time.

  37. @ Milo – I can’t guarantee anything, can you? I’m not the mask police. I follow the guidelines so that the businesses I visit don’t get cross ways with the government. That’s the only reason. What other people do is up to them. At my businesses we don’t have a mask policy so it’s up to the customer. If I have visitors and they have masks I ask them if they would be more comfortable if I put one on. Not one has asked that I do so. I believe that adults are in charge of their own lives and should live their lives accordingly. If you want the government to tell you how to live your life everyday that is up to you. We normally have 40 – 50 people in our home over the Christmas holidays. This year we invited 4 and 3 showed up. Two were RN’s and one was the mother of a RN. One works in ER and the other in OR and neither subscribe to all of the mask protocol. I have a friend who is a respiratory therapist and she thinks it’s a lot of nonsense. I don’t know what is truth from fiction I just know that I’m not going to live my life hiding in my house.

  38. Anti maskers are fine with me. Let natural selection run its course. People who have a modicum of intelligence will social distance and mask up.

  39. @OneXMarine —>

    1) You asked, “Are you naive enough to believe that the government won’t lie to you to get you to do as they please?” I believe I answered the question before you even asked it. I haven’t believe the government since Vietnam, the Pentagon’s “Five O’Clock Follies, and Richard Nixon & the Watergate tapes. So no, I don’t automatically believe what the government says.

    2) You also wrote, “Even the CDC and WHO can’t get their story straight. Dr. Fauci says that we don’t really need masks and then that we need masks. He says that we need 50% herd immunity then 70% then 90% then 75 – 80% and now back to 90%.” THIS is the most specious argument in the entire, sad Covid crisis. It presumes that medicine, science, and government knew everything about Covid-19 from Day One and we’re changing the advice and numbers just to **** with people. In fact, the CDC and medical professionals (you say “changed,” whereas I would say “updated”) advice as they learned more and more about this virus…

    The only person I *know* who lied was the President, who admitted it in taped conversations with Bob Woodward!

  40. @ Jason Brandt Lewis – The government has been lying to us long before Vietnam. And they will always lie to us when it suits their agenda. As far as the president “lying” about how severe the virus was going to be, I think it’s part of his responsibility to not have people panic and to downplay any potential disaster. His job is to project calm even in a sea of confusion. It’s no worse than in 2009 when Obama said “we have 1000’s of shovel ready projects” to keep people from going into a panic over the economy. Of course he was lying as he did numerous times during his administration and since. Politicians lie, it’s what they do. If they didn’t we wouldn’t have to worry about term limits because we would never elect them more than once.

  41. @OneXMarine —>. “Well, duh!,” as people used to say. OF COURSE the government has been lying since before Vietnam! I said that *I* didn’t believe them since Vietnam…there’s a difference. I can’t say I stopped believing government when Joseph McCarthy was waving pages of alleged Communists at the State Dept.; or when the Admirals said that the naval bombardment wiped out all the opposition before the Marines landed on Iwo Jima; or when… All those things happened before I was born! (1953) So I came of age during the urban riots of the Sixties, the Vietnam War, and Nixon’s “Secret Plan to End the War in Vietnam.” I was there when Bobby Kennedy was shot (in the ballroom he had just left); I worked at the Democratic Convention in Chicago for Eugene McCarthy and saw firsthand the police-incited riot. So, yeah, I do know the govt. lies….

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