Reclined seat causes in-flight brawl

Australian authorities escorted a man and a woman who figured in a brawl over a reclining seat during a flight from Phuket, Thailand, upon landing in Sydney, Australia.

Australian Federal Police (AFP) was investigating the case of the 27-year-old man and 42-year-old woman, who were reported to have had a heated scuffle inside Jetstar flight JQ33 on Wednesday.

One of the passengers, finance expert Scott Haywood, narrated the whole incident to Sydney radio station 2GB. The incident started when the woman “fully reclined” her seat behind the man’s mother, prompting him to harshly push it back.

“One of the passengers was distressed as a lady put her seat back on his mother,” Haywood recounted to the radio station. “It was a night flight, so it was two or three o’clock in the morning. This other passenger got out of his seat and clipped that woman’s seat who did that to (the seat of his) mother three or four times .” The furious woman threw a sucker punch to the man soon after.

“He then got up and laid a couple more on her,” Haywood further elucidated.

Several passengers attempted to disentangle the unruly pair before the airline staff responded to the situation by separating them from business class to parallel areas of the plane.

A Jetstar representative told media outlets that police arrested the duo when the flight landed in Sydney at 2 p.m.

“Our crew on board acted quickly and the customers were separated for the remainder of the flight,” the spokesman said, according to Sydney Morning Herald.

“We don’t tolerate disruptive behavior by passengers on our flights. We will conduct a review with a view to banning these passengers traveling with us in the future.”  Gianna Francesca Catolico