by Donald Wood
Last updated: 11:27 AM ET, Thu June 29, 2017
Airline passengers behaving badly has become a common occurrence in recent years, but it was taken to the extreme Monday when Alaska Airlines was forced to remove 11 people from a flight due to disruptive behavior.
According to the Alaska Dispatch News, Alaska Airlines Flight 78 was preparing to take off from Juneau to Seattle at around 6 p.m. local time Monday night when it was forced to return to the gate after a group of passengers refused to follow safety protocol for departure.
Alaska Airlines communications manager Roy Lane said that the disruptive passengers would not stop charging their cell phones during takeoff and refused to fasten their seatbelts.
The group also failed to put their seats upright and was reportedly playing music loudly while also making inappropriate comments to the flight attendants.
"While this situation does not happen every day, it's not uncommon for us to have to remove passengers if they're behaving in a disruptive manner or not following crew member instructions," Lane said in a statement to Alaska Dispatch News.
"To us, this is a safety issue - if a customer will not comply with crew member requests on the ground, it's not safe for us to allow them to fly until they demonstrate that they're willing to follow basic safety instructions."
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Once the plane made it back to the gate at Juneau International Airport, airline officials asked 11 of the passengers on the flight to deplane. The disruptive passengers boarded another flight two hours later.
It's been a rough week for compliant airline passengers, as an elderly woman in China caused a four-hour flight delay after she threw coins into a plane's engine to reportedly wish for a safe journey.
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