- United temporarily barred a woman from flying with the airline after she caused a plane to be diverted.
- The woman refused to follow the cabin crew’s instructions to return to her seat.
- “I knew you were drinking wine and you’re not allowed to,” a flight attendant said in a TikTok that captured the incident.
United Airlines has banned a woman from flying with the airline after she forced a flight to divert from its intended destination, the airline told Insider in a statement.
The woman was on board United flight 1813 on July 25, which was scheduled to fly from Houston, Texas, to Los Angeles, per United’s statement.
The flight was diverted to Phoenix, Arizona, as the woman was “disruptive” and “refused to follow the flight attendant’s instructions to return to her seat,” the statement said. United did not identify the woman.
Several videos of the incident were posted on TikTok by a user named Blake Perkins, who was a passenger on the flight. In one of the videos, Perkins wrote the flight attendants didn’t allow the woman to “have her wine.”
United declined to comment on Perkins’ claim. Insider was not immediately able to contact Perkins for comment.
“Ankther video of the karen who couldn’t get her wine. We had to land the plans to she could get escorted off and causing us even more delays than we already had. Over wine,” Perkins wrote in one of the videos posted on Thursday, misspelling the words “another” and “plane.”
In another video, two flight attendants were shown instructing the woman to remain in her seat and warning her that she’d be arrested if she refused. The woman continued to refuse to sit down.
“I knew you were drinking wine and you’re not allowed to. And I still let you board the aircraft,” the flight attendant can be heard saying in the video.
According to United’s statement, the woman was deplaned in Los Angeles and barred from flying with the airline.
“Law enforcement officials met the aircraft on arrival and removed the passenger, and the flight subsequently departed for Los Angeles later that evening. The customer has been banned from future United flights while we review this matter,” United told Insider.
It’s not the first time a passenger has been removed from a United flight. In July, United removed a passenger from a Taiwan-bound flight after he kept standing up and walking to the business class cabin. The flight was diverted to San Francisco.
