Just imagine it: You’re on a coast-to-coast flight when, suddenly, you hear it. You hear the music playing.
For passengers on a Spirit Airlines flight on Wednesday, the choice apparently was: brawl.
Five women traveling on a plane from Baltimore to Los Angeles got into a physical fight after one woman played music out loud on a boombox, LAX Police spokesman Rob Pedregon told The Washington Post. No one was arrested.
The argument began as soon as the plane landed and while it was taxiing, said Spirit Airlines spokesman Paul Berry. Flight attendants were a little delayed in getting to break it up the fight because they were strapped into their seats, he added.
Cellphone video captured on the plane shows a woman slapping and pulling another woman’s hair.
Pedregon described the altercation as a “mutual combat situation,” which is also how I describe an intense round of “Settlers of Catan.” But I digress.
Two women appeared to be intoxicated and were playing loud music, Berry said. After passengers complained, the two women responded, “What are you going to do?”
“Then to provoke the other customers they were holding up their boom box in the air, waving it around,” Berry said.
The exchange devolved from an argument over whether “they had the right to blast their music” into a physical fight, Pedregon said.
LAX Police were notified and arrived at the plane, but investigators found “no cause for any arrest,” Pedregon said. “If it had been something where there were verifiable or visible injuries or a dominant aggressor, then someone would have been arrested.”
The FBI also investigated, Pedregon said. An FBI spokeswoman told the Los Angeles Times reported no one was charged.
“It isn’t uncommon,” Pedregon said of the fight. “People lose their tempers and just refuse to get along.”
[Correction: An earlier version of this story inaccurately reported that the incident took place while the plane was in the air, based on information provided by the police. Spirit Airlines subsequently said it occurred when the plane was on the ground. The story has been corrected.]
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