a Tucson realtor went off at 35,000 feet. first class taped him to his chair.

via NBC News, The Week, TMZ and Johnny Jet.

American Airlines Flight 618 left Dallas-Fort Worth for Newark on Thursday night. About two hours in, a 67-year-old man in first class started shouting about Jesus and people going to hell.

Juan Mejia was sitting near him. "Just like a light switch, all of a sudden, it went from quiet to yelling and chaos," he told The Week.

what he said on the plane

What followed, according to passengers: the man called a Black flight attendant the n-word. He used an anti-gay slur. He grabbed or struck the passenger next to him and hit the man's computer. A woman got up to help and he pushed her.

then they brought out the tape

Then the flight attendants did something that should be taught in a business school. They walked down the aisle and handed the passengers duct tape and zip ties.

Mejia and another passenger, Richard Olenick, plus three more men and the crew, taped him to his seat and held him there for about fifteen minutes while the plane came down. Olenick's account was one line long: "He called one of the flight attendants the N word."

Another passenger, Michelle Ng-Reyes, told NBC News why the tape came out at all. "They had to physically restrain him 'cause they were worried he might try to go into the cockpit or something, which is obviously pretty scary."

The plane diverted to Baltimore. A three-and-a-half hour flight took roughly eight. Maryland Transportation Authority Police met him at the gate and he was charged with second-degree assault and disorderly conduct, then released on bond the next day. The FBI has been collecting information and talking to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Maryland about whether federal charges are warranted.

American Airlines said what airlines say. "The safety and security of our customers and team members is our top priority and we do not tolerate violence."

Mejia had the better line about what it actually cost the room. "Everyone who was in first class was basically victimised by his spewing of hatred and the discrimination." He also noted, for anyone reaching for the easy excuse: "I remember one of the stewardesses saying they only gave him one drink."

who he is, and his job

The man is Layne Arthur Lundeen. He is a real estate agent, or he was. Long Realty, where he had worked in Tucson, cut him loose. KVOA reported he is no longer employed there.

Here is the part we cannot walk past. Lundeen is from Tucson. Three days before he got on that plane, on the early morning of August 31, a gunman shot two gay men dead in the parking lot of the Venture-N, a gay bar on North 6th Avenue in Tucson, and was found carrying a list of local LGBTQ businesses. Vincent Anthony Siqueiros was 42. Cameron Davis Capara was 33.

There is no connection between these two men beyond a city and a calendar, and we are not going to invent one. But it is a hell of a week to be in Tucson and decide the word you want to shout in a pressurised cabin is that one.

The rest of it is almost restful. Nobody debated him. Nobody filmed a think piece about the marketplace of ideas. Six strangers and a cabin crew decided, in about a minute, that the flight was going to be quiet, and then they made it quiet with a roll of tape from the galley.

He can say whatever he likes. He just cannot say it standing up.