Friday was supposed to be a straightforward hop from Melbourne to Dallas. It wasn’t.
Qantas flight 21. Boeing 787. Somewhere over the Pacific, a man snapped.
He didn’t yell. He didn’t shove.
He bit the flight attendant.
Hard enough that the captain pulled over to Tahiti. Papeete to be exact. They landed at Fa’a’a International just to get the guy off.
The cost? Three hours. Twenty-three minutes. Everyone on board watched their watch.
“Sedatives were administered. Didn’t have an effect.”
One passenger described the scene. The attacker was a New Zealander. People had to restrain him. The meds? Useless. ACARs messages in the cockpit confirmed the bite. Confirmed that fellow passengers helped subdue the man because crew alone couldn’t manage it.
You ever wonder if the middle of the ocean is the last place you want trouble?
The plane left Dallas back for Melbourne soon after arriving. Barely an hour and a half layover. VH-ZNB just kept turning.
This feels familiar, doesn’t it?
March came with a JetBlue passenger biting an attendant. United saw someone rip off a seatmate’s ear. Frontier had a man bite a cop in Miami after being dragged off a flight.
It keeps happening.
Gary Leff has covered travel since 2002. He co-founded InsideFlyer. He’s on the Freddie Awards stage. Conde Nast calls him an expert. But he can’t fix this.
The miles are fine. The points work. The behavior? Not so much.
Maybe the sedatives would have worked if the plane was already on the ground. Maybe they won’t.
