Frontier passenger arrested after she refuses to deplane during argument with crew over exit row instructions
A Frontier Airlines passenger was arrested after refusing to deplane following an argument with flight attendants over exit row instructions, shocking footage shows.
Everyone aboard the flight at North Carolina’s Charlotte Douglas International Airport was also forced to deplane before takeoff during the chaos that was filmed by a TikTokker and posted online earlier this month.
The footage starts with an unidentified woman engaged in a back-and-forth with a flight attendant, at one point asking the flight crew member, “What is the problem?”
“We ain’t got no problem with that,” she added. “We understand we gotta help people get off the plane.”
The woman then told the flight attendant she was “wasting her breath,” as the crew member walked away, the video shows.
The video then cuts to the woman, who was sitting with two other passengers, getting into a verbal altercation with another flight crew member after it appeared she was being asked to exit the plane.
Over the public address system, the pilot can be heard apologizing for the delay and vowing the plane would be taking off soon once law enforcement arrived, according to the footage.
The video jumps again to a third staffer who works for Frontier or the airport also asking the woman to exit the plane, to no avail.
She then said she was calling her lawyer and she needed to reach her young grandson in Texas.
Another clip then shows one of the pilots confront the unruly passenger as others encouraged her to get off the plane.
“Are you arresting me?” she exclaimed. “What crime did I commit?”
Passengers are then seen walking off the plane and back to the waiting area.
The woman was spotted from the window being led off the plane down a flight of stairs in handcuffs to the tarmac and into the back of a police vehicle, according to the footage.
One man can be heard in the background calling the woman a “dumba–.”
“And her shirt says God on it,” another woman can be heard saying.
A Charlotte Douglas International Airport rep referred The Post to Frontier Airlines. Frontier did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Monday afternoon.
The same TikTokker, Travel with Tia, who filmed the confrontation explained in a follow-up video that when the woman realized she was in the exit row, she allegedly said she wasn’t going to “save anybody” and was going to worry about herself first.
Passengers sitting in emergency exit rows are asked by flight attendants before takeoff if they are willing and able to operate the exit door in the event there is an emergency during the flight.
“This may have been her first time in a exit row so she did not understand or realize or want to understand that the flight attendant has to get a verbal yes from everyone when you are doing, when you are going through the drill,” the TikTokker claimed.
“And she had an attitude with giving the verbal yes because she thought shaking her head was sufficient and didn’t realize or didn’t want to realize why she had to give a verbal yes.”
The woman did claim several times during the footage that she said yes as she argued with the flight crew.