Aviation
Air passenger stabs another with broken bottle on flight
A man on a flight from London to St. Lucia began smashing a wine bottle and stabbing another passenger on the flight with shards of the glass during an argument, The Sun reported.
The incident, which happened onboard a British Airways flight, was partially caught on video, reportedly occurred about an hour and 20 minutes prior to landing, and the crew had to wrestle the man to the ground.
“It was a truly frightening experience for the crowded passengers,” a source told The Sun. “There was a lot of understandable upset.”
According to The Sun, the man also smashed the bottle against the overhead bin as glass and blood dripped down onto fearful fliers. In the video, the attacker can be seen wearing a denim jacket, glasses and a hat and was covered in blood.
“Suddenly there was blood in the cabin,” the source told the outlet. “No one knew how gruesome it was going to get. Witnessing that in such a confined space, and not knowing if or how the bloodshed was going to end, was horrific.”
In addition to the flight attendants who intervened, “some very brave individuals separated the two men and got them back in their seats,” an insider told The Sun.
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Upon landing, first responders and police waited for the plane’s arrival upon the pilot’s request. Injured passengers were taken to St. Jude’s Hospital for treatment, reports The St. Lucia Times. The Daily Mail later reported that passengers are blaming the airline for providing the attacker with too much alcohol throughout the nearly nine-hour flight.
She added: “The main aggressor was behaving terribly in the lead-up to the incident, the BA staff were perhaps too intimidated to regain control but the atmosphere was clearly leading to some kind of incident.”
She told the outlet that “flight attendants poured fuel on a fire,” because “they allowed a party atmosphere” while “about 10 men” blocked the flight attendants and other areas of the plane’s facilities.
The woman said female passengers “started panicking and did not stop crying” for the remainder of the flight.
The suspect has not been named and information about criminal charges was not immediately available.