A Dutch man had to be restrained in flexi-cuffs and tied to a seat using seatbelt extenders after he spat on fellow passengers and repeatedly grabbed female seatmates during a ten hour flight from Amsterdam to Salt Lake City on Sunday.
Darnell Silver Collins, who also holds US residency, has been charged with assaulting and intimidating flight attendants, as well as assaulting another passenger during Delta Air Lines flight 57 on January 21.
An affidavit filed in federal court in Utah describes how Collins allegedly started to become disruptive just one hour into the flight when he started to randomly tapping other passengers.
Collins was loud and disruptive, and his behavior, according to witnesses, only got worse as the flight went on.
At one point, he started to follow another passenger and repeatedly touched her until she physically pushed him away. Undeterred, Collins turned his attention to another female passenger, grabbing her arm and refusing to let go until flight attendants and other passengers intervened.
In an effort to keep passengers safe from Collins, the flight attendants cleared eight seats around him but Collins kept on turning around and talking aggressively to passengers sat in the rows behind him.
The flight attendants tried to de-escalate the situation by moving Collins to the very back of the aircraft, where they had to move another 8-10 passengers away from him. Despite this, Collins allegedly spat at another passenger, striking at least two people.
Collins then approached a flight attendant in the aft galley who told law enforcement she was grateful that she was protected by a meal cart because she felt so unsafe around him.
Even after all of this, Collins continued to touch passengers as they walked past his seat row and in the end, the flight attendants used flexi-cuffs to restrain his hands, although this didn’t stop him from releasing his seatbelt and standing up and causing even more problems.
Around eight hours into the flight, the flight attendants then connected three seat belt extenders together and wrap them around his torso and the back of a seat to hold him in place for the remainder of the flight.
Delta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It is alleged that most of the flight attendants onboard the Airbus A350-900 felt unsafe because of Collins’ actions and that at least one flight attendant had to supervise Collins for nine hours of the ten-hour flight because his behaviour was so erratic.
