Woman Sings On Plane, So Awful Flight Is Diverted And She’s Kicked Off [Video]

A woman sang on a plane very, very badly — so horribly, in fact, that she was tackled and cuffed by a federal air marshal on a Thursday American Airlines flight from Los Angeles to New York. The plane was actually diverted to make an unscheduled landing in Kansas City, Missouri. There, law enforcement officers removed the unnamed songbird from the plane as she continued to yowl out “I Will Always Love You” with all the skill of a dying tomcat in heat.

No, really. I didn’t believe it either. But there’s video.

Even though the irate flight attendant keeps telling people not to take photos on the flight, everybody’s got their cell phone out and everybody’s snapping video, so it was probably inevitable that the story would make its way to the wilds of YouTube.

If you’re asking why the woman doesn’t have a name, well, it turns out that the officers questioned her and learned that she wasn’t drunk or on drugs, despite her decidedly unruly actions. She was released when it became obvious that she was harmless.

According to CBS Atlanta, it’s believed that she suffers from diabetes and was having an episode that affected her ability to control her behavior. She was therefore released without being charged with any crime.

However, American Airlines wouldn’t offer her another flight, telling her that she would have to make other arrangements to get to New York.

As frequent flyer blogger Ben Schlappig wrote: “If she was actually interfering with the flight crew, am I wrong to think she’d be charged with something for that? So yeah, it sounds to me like her only crime was singing Whitney Houston songs poorly — which is awesome.”

I think most frequent flyers can agree that more bad songbirds, not to mention screaming babies, need to be hauled off commercial airplanes in handcuffs. Heh.

A heated debate broke out on Flyertalk about whether or not the woman should have gotten a refund. American Airlines is certainly within their rights to ban a disruptive passenger, but the poor woman probably didn’t choose to be a diabetic or to lose control of her behavior.

AA has ignored the debate, but most people speculated that they’ll keep her money because their terms and conditions clearly state they can ban you from flying if: “your physical or mental condition is such that in American’s sole opinion, you are rendered or likely to be rendered incapable of comprehending or complying with safety instructions without the assistance of an attendant.”

She didn’t choose to be impaired, but she was definitely not all there. Watch the video and see what you think.

Wowsers, she’s bad. I say the pilot made the right call. I think I want to shake his hand. What about you?

Would you be mad if your flight was diverted to arrest this woman singing on your plane?

[American Airlines plane photo by Patrick Cardinal via Wikimedia Commons and Flickr]