A woman on a Frontier Airlines flight was cited for assault after allegedly striking a flight attendant with an intercom phone while being escorted off the plane at Denver International Airport, authorities said.
The incident occurred Sunday aboard Flight 708 from Denver to Tampa International Airport, according to a Frontier statement.
“A customer became belligerent onboard and was asked to deplane. As she was deplaning, she picked up an intercom phone and struck a flight attendant with it,” the statement said.
“The customer was subsequently arrested by Denver law enforcement, and the flight departed for Tampa at approximately 5:30 a.m,” the airline said.
The plane departed nearly four hours late, according to the flight-tracking site, FlightAware. Department personnel responded to the report of a disturbance shortly before 4 a.m., police said.
"The passenger, Shuri Turner, was later cited with assault, and DPD officers assisted Turner with booking another flight," police said.
Turner could not be reached for comment Monday afternoon.
Sunday’s incident is just the latest involving unruly passengers. In March, aboard a Southwest Airlines plane in Dallas, a passenger is alleged to have punched another flyer multiple times.
The incident happened one day after a man aboard a United Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Boston allegedly tried to open a plane’s emergency exit door and then attacked a flight attendant.
In February, 2022, the Federal Aviation Administration referred 80 cases of unruly travelers for possible prosecution during incidents over the past year, as part of what was then a dramatic spike in on-board misbehavior during the coronavirus pandemic.
During the first few months of the year, the pace of possible prosecutions referred to the FBI because of incidents aboard flights slowed down.
The Federal Aviation Administration identified 17 cases it has sent to the FBI in the first three months of this year — mostly for incidents that happened last year but took time to investigate