Another Airline Freakout – Man Repeatedly Punches Flight Attendant

An angry passenger on a United Airlines flight had to be restrained by other passengers after he punched a flight attendant multiple times.

Naya Jiminez caught the incident on video before her flight took off from San Francisco to Houston after midnight on Monday.

She went to sit down in her seat, when a woman and her husband blocked her from it, telling her to sit across the aisle.

"I'm not really a confrontational person, so I sat at a seat that I found nearby and just kind of waited things out because I didn't want to block anybody else from sitting in their seat," she told KTRK.

Eventually, a flight attendant came over to find out what was going on, and the female flight attendant spent a lot longer than what should've been required to explain to the woman that Naya needed to sit in her assigned seat.

"They had to bring in a gate attendant to try to talk to both of them," Naya told ABC7. "Then, he began slurring his speech a little bit, like, 'Sir, why are you smiling at me?' That's the first thing he said."

That's when the man started repeatedly punching the flight attendant.

The man then tried to jump out of the plane, according to Naya, who said that he ran toward the front of the plane after escaping the restraint of airline employees and passengers, and opened an emergency exit.

"After he paused for a minute, he ran toward where the pilot was, where the emergency exit doors are, and attempted to open it. He successfully opened the emergency exit and was about to jump down," she explained, "The plane is elevated, so he would have jumped apparently two stories to the ground, and the flight attendants just kicked in, and everybody pulled him back to safety."

United Airlines released a statement to local news outlets;

"On Sunday night, our team at San Francisco International Airport immediately contacted law enforcement officials after a customer became disruptive during boarding. We're grateful to our team in San Francisco for their professionalism in this situation and for looking out for the safety of our customers and their fellow United employees."

The man has been identified as 47-year-old Cody Benjamin Lovins.