Passenger Tries To Leap From An American Airlines Airplane

Quick-witted passengers on a recent Chicago-bound American Airlines Flight 1219 weren’t munching pretzels; they were asking for duct tape. It came in handy when a man decided he'd just had enough of the flight—and tried to open an airplane door and jump out. The airplane, which had taken off from Albuquerque International Sunport Airport, hung a quick U-turn to head back to the runway.

Barstool Sports’ “Wonton Don” was on the flight and saw the whole thing—and then he moved into action: “Me and 5 other dudes had to wrestle him into the aisle, duct tape his legs, and throw flexi-cuffs on him. Just safely landed back in ABQ but HOLY S—T,” he tweeted. 

That’s the problem with flying commercial—too many strangers, increasingly in distress, with such incidents becoming more and more common.  

In March 2023, passenger Francisco Severo Torres tried to open an airplane door on a United Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Boston. He also stabbed a flight attendant with a broken metal spoon and said he’d "kill every man on this plane." He sounds nice.

In May, an Asiana Airlines airplane was 700 feet from the ground and minutes from its landing in Daegu, South Korea when a passenger managed to open an emergency door. (An aircraft door actually can open midflight when it doesn't have to contend with the air pressure suction caused by higher altitudes.)

After a quieter summer, incidents of this kind picked up again in the fall: in September, a passenger named Biswajit Debnath tried to force open an emergency door on a domestic flight in India. He, too, wanted to catch a cloud. 

In November, an unnamed woman on a Korean Air flight from New York to Incheon, South Korea also tried to open an emergency exit door in mid-air. She later tested positive for meth.

That same month, a passenger of a Southwest Airlines aircraft parked at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport hopped from the airplane’s emergency exit and onto a wing.

These scares were different from a January 2024 incident, when a man took it upon himself to exit an AeroMexico airplane that had been stuck on the tarmac in Mexico City for hours. The airplane was sweltering, so that was totally normal.

But dramatic gestures like these are exceedingly rare in the bizjet space. No one attempted to jump out of Taylor Swift’s Bombardier Global 6000, chartered from VistaJet, when she was racing to the Super Bowl earlier this month, for example. And it has been a full five years since a deranged disc jockey freaked out on a JetSmarter Gulfstream flight, screaming "Heads will be chopped off. Heads will be chopped off!” and, for good measure, “I’m a sick f---. I was just in a psych hospital. You have no idea.” 

More recently, the former Olympic athlete and YouTuber Trevor Jacob made headlines in 2021 when he parachuted from his 1940 Taylorcraft airplane, citing a technical malfunction. Given Jacob's daredevil reputation, his explanation felt dubious at the time, but the video of his descent—“I Crashed My Plane”—racked up more than 1.7 million views. When his story fell apart, Jacob was sentenced to six months in jail.

Was it worth it, Trevor? That is a lot of views.