What do a pilot’s divorce, Hilary Clinton, and Donald Trump all have in common? Well, they were the reason why dozens of passengers on a recent United Airlines flight fled the plane before takeoff.
The thing is, it’s not like right before takeoff the pilot got divorced and then Clinton and Trump showed up. Instead, the passengers ran off after the pilot ranted about her divorce, Hilary Clinton, and current President Donald Trump.
What a time to be alive.
The United Airlines flight was scheduled to depart from Austin-Bergstrom International Airport on Saturday afternoon, only to be delayed by the odd scene with the pilot.
Right after she boarded, the pilot reportedly got into an argument with crew members. From there, the pilot — while in the cockpit — began to speak over the intercom to the passengers:
“I thought she was a first-class passenger, complaining,” one passenger told The Washington Post. “Then she grabs the mic.”
Another passenger told Reuters that the pilot asked for a vote on “whether we should have her change into her uniform.”
“Then she said, ‘Sorry, I’m late. I’m going through a divorce.’ And I thought: Uh oh,” one of the passengers Randy Reiss added.
The passener quoted — Randy Reiss — also described to the Washington Post an odd situation where the pilot pointed to one black and one white passenger for a reason nobody seemed to understand.
Naturally in the moment, Reiss decided to tweet about it.
Then she identified an interracial couple in first class, I think in an effort to say "yay unity" but it was was awkward.
— Randy Reiss (@undeadsinatra) February 11, 2017
Then, the pilot began talking politics:
“She’s like ‘I don’t care if you voted for Trump or Clinton. They’re both [expletive],” Reiss wrote.
After Reiss stopped tweeting, a different passenger started to videotape the incident. The video was posted to YouTube, but has since been taken down. It did however capture this line that seemed to be one of the last straws for some of the passengers:
“So I’ll stop, and we’ll fly the airplane,” the pilot said in the video. “Don’t worry. I’m going to let my co-pilot fly it. He’s a man.”
Reiss was the first one to leave the plane, and more passengers followed, some of whom were aided by police officers:
“Okay, if you don’t feel safe, get off the airplane, but otherwise we can go,” the pilot added.
According to the Washington Post, some passengers and a gate agent were seen crying:
“People were pleading … ‘Please call security,’” a passenger said. “I’m wondering, if we didn’t do something, if the plane was going to take off.”
The Washington Post contacted United Airlines for more information and wanted to ask a question, but didn’t receive a response. On top of that, no information was provided regarding what would happen to the pilot. Instead, the following statement was released by United:
“We hold our employees to the highest standards and have replaced this pilot with a new one to operate the flight, which has since departed Austin. We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience.”
90 minutes after their scheduled takeoff, a new pilot arrived and flew the passengers to their scheduled destination of San Francisco.
Reiss added one more interesting tidbit to the story: after the pilot was escorted out by police, she saw Reiss and offered to write a book together.
Once again, what a time to be alive.
