[VIDEO IN EXTENDED ARTICLE]
Passengers reportedly fled a flight before it could take off on Saturday � after a United Airlines pilot went on a bizarre rant over the intercom.
In a ball cap and casual shirt, the pilot remarked on her appearance after she boarded the flight at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in the late afternoon, passenger Randy Reiss wrote on Twitter.
�Then she says �sorry, I�m going through (a) divorce,’� Reiss wrote. �Ummmm uh oh.�
Reiss told BuzzFeed that other passengers even sympathized with �oh�s and aw�s� � at first.
But as her speech veered from her personal life into a string of non sequiturs, the mood aboard the San Francisco-bound jet turned from cozy to uncomfortable, to worse.
�She�s like �I don�t care if you voted for Trump or Clinton. They�re both (expletive),� Reiss wrote.
He started shaking, he wrote, after the pilot said she was about to take off.
�So I�ll stop and we�ll fly the airplane,� she says in another passenger�s video. �Don�t worry. I�m going to let my co-pilot fly it. He�s a man.�
Reiss got out of his seat, collected his bag and made for the exit. �Half the flight followed my lede,� he wrote.
�OK, if you don�t feel safe get off the airplane, but otherwise we can go,� the pilot says in the video, still cheerful, as her passengers begin to revolt.
�Did I offend you?� she says to someone in first class.
�Disarm the doors,� a flight attendant says.
Reiss posted a photo of a police officer standing by after the pilot followed her passengers back to the terminal.
Reiss wrote that she hugged him before they parted. She offered to write a book with him. She had been crying.
United Airlines did not immediately reply to The Washington Post�s questions about the incident: who the pilot was, whether she would have been allowed to fly had her passengers not fled, and whether she had been disciplined.
�We removed her from the flight,� a spokesperson for the airline told the Austin American-Statesman. �We�re going to discuss this matter with her.�
The spokesperson said a new flight crew took the plane to San Franscisco the same day � an account Reiss confirmed.
�New captain on board. Apologized. Professional,� he wrote on Twitter. �Radio silence.�
(c) 2017, The Washington Post � Avi Selk
3 Responses
Not knowing the difference between H Clinton and Pres Trump is a problem.
Imagine having Hillary Clinton running the country it would be a lot like this crazy lady lol…
I wouldn’t trust a pilot who seems mentally unstable. I would get off the plane