An American Airlines passenger who reportedly joked about having the coronavirus right found out it was no laughing matter.
Unfortunately, so did his fellow passengers.
The American flight from Dallas to Nashville was delayed three times on Saturday after a male passenger refused to put his tray table back in the upright position just before takeoff, and then reportedly joked that he had the coronavirus.
That caused Flight 1076, which was scheduled to depart at 6:30 p.m. and land in Nashville at 8:40, to be delayed almost eight hours until it finally arrived at 4:40 a.m. Sunday morning.
"People were freaked out because nobody knew what was going on," passenger Brandon Kenney told WKRN in Nashville. "People didn't know if he was actually sick or if he really didn't have coronavirus or not."
That was especially evident with police and HAZMAT crews boarded the plane and removed the unidentified passenger. He was arrested.
"Right after he was escorted off the plane, one of the cops came back and kind of explained the situation to the people that were sitting near him and kind of spelled it out for us and told us not to worry about it and really was just talking about how he was joking about having the coronavirus," said Kenney.
But if fellow passengers' fears were assuaged, anger settled in after some members of the flight crew decided not to fly, leading to the delays totaling eight hours until it finally took off just after 2 a.m.
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