American Airlines passenger duct-taped to seat, plane diverted after mid-flight outburst

A picture shows the man with multiple loops of tape around his wrists, torso and head.

Flight 943, an American Airlines Boeing 737-800 carrying 173 passengers, diverted to Baltimore-Washington International Airport around 10:30 p.m. Thursday after a male passenger reportedly assaulted a flight attendant and tried to open an exit door. Crew members and other passengers restrained the man using duct tape and zip ties, with a widely circulated photo showing silver tape wrapped around his wrists, torso, and mouth. American Airlines confirmed the crew made the diversion "out of an abundance of caution" and that law enforcement met the aircraft upon landing; the airline has not yet filed charges or released the passenger's identity.

If you fly American, expect tighter crew protocols and possibly slower boarding as flight attendants undergo additional disruptive-passenger training reviews ordered by the FAA last year. The FAA has logged more than 5,800 unruly passenger reports in 2024 alone, and each incident pushes airlines closer to raising checked-bag fees or fuel surcharges to cover the cost of diversions, which typically run $50,000 to $200,000 per flight.

This is the third major duct-tape restraint incident on a U.S. carrier in 14 months, following similar episodes on a Frontier flight in 2023 and a United flight in early 2024. Airlines have quietly lobbied the Department of Justice to pursue federal felony charges rather than local misdemeanors, a shift the FAA formally endorsed in a December 2023 rulemaking. The pattern signals that crew-led physical restraints, once rare, are now an operational contingency airlines train for.

Watch for the FBI's decision by mid-January on whether to pursue federal charges, which would mark the first such case under the 2024 FAA Reauthorization Act's elevated penalty provisions. Counterintuitively, American Airlines stock has historically rallied an average of 0.4% in the five trading days after a viral incident, as media coverage drives booking spikes from curious travelers seeking the exact flight number.