Woman zip tied mid-flight after threatening to kill flight attendant

The woman was later arrested and charged for her actions on the flight. Photo / Unsplash

A 32-year-old woman has been arrested and charged after threatening to kill a flight attendant on an Alaska Airlines flight last week.

Chloe Dasilva was flying from San Francisco to Chicago on Friday, April 7 when she became unruly and threatened to kill a male flight attendant.

As a result, the plane was forced to make an unscheduled landing in Kansas City and Dasilva was arrested and charged with interfering with flight crew members and attendants.

According to reports, Dasilva got into a profanity-laden confrontation with the flight attendant, prompting a flight attendant and two passengers to restrain her with zip ties.

A mother and her baby who were seated near Dasilva reportedly switched seats for their safety but concerns for the safety of other passengers eventually led the pilot to divert the flight.

Federal prosecutors in Kansas City announced the charges on Monday.

Dasilva appeared in federal court on Monday and the incident is currently being investigated by the FBI.

In light of recent incidents involving misbehaving passengers on flights, members of the US Senate and House have proposed a new no-fly list. This would empower the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to ban individuals who have been convicted or fined for assaulting or interfering with commercial airline crew members.

It is worth noting that the number of unruly passenger incidents on flights has decreased since a judge ruled against the Covid-19 mask requirement on planes last month.

For the week ending April 9 of this year, there were only two reported incidents of unruly passengers out of 10,000 flights, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). This is a decrease compared to previous weeks.

However, the number of unruly passenger incidents is still significantly higher, about five times, compared to the pre-pandemic levels.

This has led airline unions to support the proposed bill aimed at creating a no-fly list for misbehaving passengers.