Courtesy of Grand Junction Police Department
- A Breeze Airways flight from Virginia to Los Angeles diverted to Colorado.
- Local police said a passenger shouted racial slurs while waving a skateboard.
- He was arrested after twice breaking free from restraints, police added.
A cross-country Breeze Airways flight took nearly 13 hours after diverting when an “unruly” passenger got into an altercation while waving a skateboard.
Wednesday’s Flight 704 took off from Norfolk, Virginia, just before 9:30 a.m., bound for Los Angeles.
Around three hours into the journey, the Airbus A220 suddenly changed course. Data from Flightradar24 shows the plane circling around before heading north and diverting to Grand Junction, Colorado.
In a statement shared on social media, the Grand Junction Police Department said that officers responded to “assist with an unruly passenger.”
It described the man as intoxicated, “yelling racist slurs at airline staff while waving a skateboard.”
Police officers also twice put him in restraints, but he broke out of them both times, it added.
Local police said that “at no time did the suspect physically assault anyone, and no injuries were reported.”
The passenger was taken into custody, and an investigation is ongoing, local police added.
Flight-tracking data shows the same plane took off from Grand Junction about seven hours after it landed there.
It landed in Los Angeles shortly after 7 p.m. local time, instead of the expected arrival time of noon.
Breeze Airways did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider outside US working hours.
According to Federal Aviation Administration data, there have been just over 1,000 reports of unruly passengers so far this year.
That means 2025 is set to be the lowest year since before the pandemic.
Such reports rocketed fivefold to nearly 6,000 in 2021. While they halved the following year, levels have remained above those pre-pandemic.
