London-Bound Plane Back To Miami After Woman Aboard Refuses To Mask Up

The flight, with 129 passengers and 14 crew members aboard, landed back in Miami one hour and 48 minutes after it departed on Wednesday.

Representational Image. (File Photo)

New Delhi: An American Airlines passenger plane bound for London turned around mid-flight after a female passenger refused to wear a mask.

The flight was over the Atlantic Ocean when the passenger allegedly refused to obey instructions to wear a mask and became disruptive, ABC News reported a spokesperson for the airline as saying.

The flight, with 129 passengers and 14 crew members aboard, landed back in Miami one hour and 48 minutes after it departed on Wednesday.

“Once the plane made it to the gate, the passenger was escorted off the plane by MDPD officers without incident,” said Detective A. Colome from the Miami-Dade Police Department, CNN reported.

“The passenger was then dealt with administratively by American Airlines staff,” added Detective Colome.

The flight was finally cancelled and the passengers had to rebook on future flights.

“We thank our crew for their professionalism and apologize to our customers for the inconvenience,” the airlines said in a statement.

The American Airlines has placed the woman, who refused to mask up, on the internal no-fly list pending an investigation.

There have already been 151 unruly passenger reports logged this year, as per the data by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which had earlier in January last year announced a “zero tolerance” policy for unruly passenger behaviour.

As per the data, 92 of those were mask-related incidents.

So far this year, 32 investigations have been initiated and four enforcement action cases have been initiated, as per the agency’s tracking site.

The FAA data showed that 2021 was the worst on record for unruly airplane passenger behavior in the United States as 5,981 reports of unruly passengers were logged.