Violent Passenger Tries to Open Cabin Door Mid-Air on Korean Air Flight

A man was restrained after attempting to open an emergency exit on a Korean Air flight headed for Seoul. The man was reportedly arrested after the plane landed on time at Incheon International Airport.

Unruly Passenger

On November 7th, Korean Air Flight KE658 was flying from Suvarnabhumi Airport (BKK) in Bangkok, Thailand to Incheon International Airport (ICN) in Seoul, South Korea. The flight was operated by an Airbus A330-300 (registration HL7586) as usual.

With 238 passengers on board, the flight departed Bangkok on time and took off at 21:49 local time.

However, as the flight was cruising at 37,000 feet, a man decided to sit in one of the crew jump seats and refused to get up despite requests from the crew. The man further displayed strange behavior near the R3 door, screaming and yelling at the crew and other passengers. Eventually crew had to restrain the man as he started walking towards the emergency exit, and isolated the man away from other passengers. Unlike initial reports, Korean Air stated that the man however did not attempt to open the emergency exit.

The flight continued without further incident, and landed at Incheon International Airport on time at 4:39 AM local time.

Arrested on Arrival

According to news reports, the man was arrested on arrival and taken into custody of the Incheon International Airport Police Corps. The Police Corps is conducting further investigation of the incident. At the time of writing, the only information available is that the man is not a Korean national.

Regarding the incident, Korean Air stated the following:

"The purser and flight attendants notified the passenger that he is breaching aviation safety law", and that "under the captain's orders, the passenger was restrained and moved to a isolated area away from other passengers, and was able to calm the passenger down via conversation".

The South Korean airline further stated, "Should an incident that poses as a threat to safe air operations occur, no tolerance would be allowed".

The incident also went viral on social media, as video footage of the man causing chaos near the emergency exit was uploaded to various social networking services. You can see the video here. 

Bottom Line

While air rage incidents are unfortunately occurring quite often nowadays, Korean Air seems to have done a nice job handling this unruly passenger as no other passenger got hurt. The flight was also able to continue its path without further event and even landed on time at its intended destination.