The internet is chock full of airline confrontation videos lately. The latest involves an Oakland-bound Southwest flight that originated in Dallas, and it is quite a doozy. This one is less disturbing than the United bloodying up a ticketed passenger on an overbooked flight video, has more punches landed than the American attendant almost hits baby video, and is substantially more entertaining than the United agent cancels ticket over baggage fee dispute video. In an on-board airplane brawl that took place Sunday in Burbank before the flight departed for Oakland, two bros in white polo shirts exchange a series of roundhouses and haymakers before a heroic Santa Clara man intervenes and stops the fight by subduing the guy who is clearly winning.
ABC 7 has carefully pastiched two amateur cell phone videos together to give us the life cycle of this airline donnybrook, a fight which ultimately takes up two separate aisles of the plane. The cause of the fight is unknown, it is unclear whether the two bros know one another, and passengers can be seen fleeing and screaming throughout the episode.
But the hero here is retired Santa Clara fire captain Dan Green, who is substantially larger than either of the combatants, and pulled the more violent fellow off of the other before more damage could be done.
ABC 7 managed to get an interview with Green after he broke up the fight. "Something needed to be done,” Green said, noting that his son was on the flight. “If somebody didn’t do anything, not only his safety but everybody else’s safety could be jeopardized.”
Burbank police arrested one of the bros, Chaze Mickalo Gable of Lancaster (Los Angeles County), and CBS 5 reports that he’s facing assault and battery charges and a $50,000 bail. The unidentified victim suffered an eye contusion, a lacerated nose, and a chipped tooth.
For their part, Southwest issued a statement saying, "Our employees are our everyday heroes and are trained to de-escalate conflict while delivering heartfelt hospitality on nearly 4,000 flights to nearly the half-million customers who fly Southwest every day."
Green puts it differently in a separate interview with NBC Bay Area. “What was awesome was the women were the first ones there,” Green told NBC Bay Area. Holding a smartphone aloft, he continued, “I saw people with their cell phones, everybody’s like this, but nobody’s helping.”
No word on whether Green was a offered a flight credit or even a free cocktail.
Related: SF Supervisor Proposes Law To Prevent SFPD From Forcibly Removing Airline Passengers From Planes