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It's getting awfully ugly in the so-called friendly skies lately.
For the second time in less than a week, an incident over reclining seats and legroom led to a passenger dispute and an emergency landing.
This time, it happened Wednesday night on an American Airlines flight from Miami to Paris. A passenger in front of 61-year old Edmond Alexandre was trying to recline his seat when Alexandre objected. The two had words; when a flight attended came over to try to intervene and let cooler heads prevail, Alexandre allegedly grabbed the flight attendant's arm.
That prompted U.S. Air Marshals who were traveling on the flight to jump into action and restrain Alexandre. The flight was diverted to Boston and Alexandre was removed and charged with interfering with the flight crew.
The flight then continued on to Paris.
The incident happened just days after two passengers in a dispute over a reclining seat forced a United Airlines flight from Newark to Denver to land in Chicago. The two passengers were removed, and the flight continued on to Denver where it landed 98 minutes late.
The argument began when a man seated in Row 12 of the plane attached the Knee Defender to his tray table, lowered it, and began working on his laptop. The Knee Defender is a device that prevents the seat in front of you from reclining. A woman seated directly in front of the man turned around and asked him to remove the device so she could recline. He refused.
A flight attended intervened and asked the man to remove the Knee Defender, as they are prohibited on United Airlines flights. He again refused. The female passenger then stood up, turned around and threw a cup of water at him, according to the Associated Press.
The flight landed in Chicago and the passengers were removed.
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