A domestic flight in the United States was forced to make an emergency landing after a passenger began shouting that LGBTQ+ people were giving him cancer and declared, “the plane is going down”.
The Sun Country Airlines flight departed Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport around 7:15am on Friday, 3 October, bound for Newark, New Jersey. However, the plane was diverted to Chicago less than halfway through its scheduled journey.
Speaking to the Minnesota Star Tribune, fellow passenger Seth Evans described the man’s behaviour as erratic and disturbing. Sitting across the aisle from him, the man reportedly oscillated between playing Candy Crush on his phone and yelling out bizarre conspiracy theories.
“He kept saying he was being ‘gang chased’, ‘cooked’, and ‘radiated’ by the LGBTQ+ community,” Evans said. “He claimed it was causing him to get cancer.”
According to Evans, the man also wore an absurd number of face coverings.
“He had no less than 15 face masks stacked on top of one another,” Evans recounted, adding that the man also shouted, “Trump is here,” at one point.
Flight Diverted as Precaution
The crew of Sun Country flight SY283 decided to divert to O’Hare International Airport in Chicago out of an abundance of caution. The man was removed from the aircraft by law enforcement and handcuffed upon landing.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Sun Country Airlines confirmed the disruption:
“The flight landed without incident as a precaution, in response to a disruptive passenger. The passenger in question was turned over to law enforcement and removed from the aircraft.”
No injuries were reported, and the airline has not confirmed whether the man was placed under mental health observation or charged following the incident.
