Police meet AA182 at LAX today (24 Feb 2019)
 

As the wheels touch down, there is an announcement to stay in your seats and local officials will be boarding the plane. Three police vans are parked at AA hanger and the police and AA safety officials take 3 persons off the plane, one in business and two in coach, escort them down a stairway where at least 2 are handcuffed. We were two rows behind one of the persons and could hear the safety officer ask the person to collect their personal items and deplane. The person was not drunk rude or disorderly and followed instructions. The FA, eager to tell their side as passengers deplaned said that the " f" bomb had been used and did not have to tolerate crude language. One pilot deplaned quickly prior to the passengers. The crew was your standard AA international crew who did the bare minimum and spent loads of the flight talking loudly in the galley and blocking entrance to the front lav for hours on the pretense that the pilots were coming out. As we saw the FA at the luggage area, they loudly proclaimed that they were off the clock and did not need to answer any more questions. We had just finished 3 weeks of very pleasant travel through Oceania and Asia with 4 different airlines and 10 flights with none of this drama. Welcome home AA..going for great as usual.

Considering the amount of headache/paperwork generated by having police involved, especially for an arriving international flight, I hope there is more to this than just crude language.

It depends.

If it is something minor and not worth prosecuting, a quick call to the US Attorney and the individual is simply denied entry and shipped back. If it something serious, they are processed privately and then head off for their appearance.

Or Orange Juice..

If it is something minor, why would they be denied entry?

fixed that for you

If the pax is a US Citizen, pax will likely be escorted by law enforcement through immigration (subject to any secondary screening) and then to airport police holding area. If there is probable cause to believe the pax has committed a crime, pax can be arrested by the appropriate law enforcement agency and booked into jail pending charges, or held in detention to await bail, etc. Otherwise, pax would be released (and may still be subject to charges to arise subsequently).

If pax is a non-citizen, there is more leeway to detain without probable cause (or rather to detain for longer without hurrying to a probable cause determination). No non-citizen has an absolute right to enter, regardless of visa or LPR status, so immigration officers could remove the pax to country of origin for any reason including but not limited to commission of a federal offense onboard. But removal for something like disobeying an FA's request not to hear the F-word seems very very unlikely.

"Minor" is a relative term. Significant enough to result in custody and a provable violation which would be prosecuted if the passengers were US nationals, would be an easy reason to deny entry. It goes without saying that if prosecution is declined altogether because the facts are lacking, that what CBP does is simply up to CBP.

as said above we were 2 rows behind one of the people of interest and saw or heard nothing out of the ordinary during the flight and although citizenship can certainly not be ascertained from appearanes, all three persons were male and caucasian. Did a quick Google search today and couldn't find any more details. We have friends in public safety in Chicago who tell us the calling of police by airlines has increased..not that there is more bad behavior on the part of passengers but a quick trigger by the airlines. Cops don't like to be involved unless there is something significant but we just didn't see anything to indicate that and the exit behavior was very orderly by the passengers, less so the FA who were racing through the aisles and all were gathered at the doorway. They could not have all been witnesses to said behavior but were clearly in it together to back each other up. On our flight back to Ord we talked to the FA about the incident and she was shocked but said there are a lot of issues with the veteran FA and separately with passengers with too much to drink .. One might think that putting a few hundred strangers in a metal tube for hours and plying them with free alcohol at high altitudes is a recipe for incidents .. May be we should be surprised there are not more

Any chance they were prisoners being extradited? The F-bomb comment may have been BS.

I get it's an union/seniority issue, but I never got why the US3 are OK with sticking their dragons on the international routings where, you know, they actually compete with other air carriers while their competent/nice FA's are all operating domestic routings.

Aren't the FAs partially/totally responsible--they served the drinks.

this x 100.

It would.

The heavy police response makes it sound more like persons of interest to U.S. authorities unrelated to the flight, not just a flight crew going rogue and calling in rude pax.

At least, I would hope.

yeah, sounds like an extradition to me.

This sounds like the most likely explanation to me.

Not always. I was on flight from LHR-ACC one time with an asylum seeker being sent back. He was put on the plane before us and was not guarded.

In this case, the pax in J could have easily been a wealthy person being summoned for a white collar court case. The OP might not have seen the PVG security place them on the plane. But once on board, I'm sure pax for these kinds of cases are not usually deemed violent threats. This is just my WAG.

any chance the pax in Y had switched back and forth with the folks seated in J?

Dunno

FA has told me it is 'theft'

Purser and FA did an inflight upgrade of my daughter to an open F seat DFW-LHR, swore me to secrecy- said they could get fired.

It could be that they were just people who the authorities wanted to arrest (not being extradited -- just arrested upon entering the country)

All the FA talk is most likely nonsense. Is using profanity on a plane even illegal? The cops arrest people when a crime is reported, not when someone uses foul language.

This. The arrestees probably had warrants in the NCIC database. All else equal, that seems much likelier than extradition or the profanity thing.

Don't think it's extradition. China doesn't have extraction treaty with US and given the current state of affairs, it's doubly unlikely that China will comply with any US extradition request voluntarily. And extradition flights don't go thru 3rd countries without extradition treaty. So there is basically zero chance these guys were being extradited from China to the US or from another country to the US via China.

I think these guys showed up on some sort of no fly list or criminal database. The alternative explanation is that they were expelled from China for some reason... and the US Govt wants to debrief them.

I still think they stole some pajamas from F.

totally agree with this and FA does have the ability to with liquor if they feel that the person is intoxicated

I really don't think it was an extradition at all. It is a crime to not obey the directions of a crew member and there could have been words between the FA and passenger that led to the FA request to have locaI official's..their words meet the plane. This situation has definitely occurred before . In this case, There was no escort with at least the man in business class, and we could clearly see AA security go directly to his seat in the bulkhead and hear the AA security man ask him to get his things together. The passenger opened the overheard, took out a briefcase and accompanied AA security off the plane. The police did not enter The plane and met the passengers after they exited the plane. Being removed from a plane does not automatically result in arrest or addition to a no fly list, if it is an flight related issue, the airline would have to agree or want to press charges and the police may have asked that at the door where they were waiting.


you are really at the mercy of the crew on a flight. The pilots will not and should not leave the cockpit to adjudicate disputes and have to back their FA even if the FA exaggerate the situation.

appreciate all the theories and wish we did know the truth. I googled the next day but didn't find anything. If It was a crime of any kind it should be publc info? It would be good data

I agree with your sentiment here.... Talk about a 'blue wall' when it comes to police..... Is it a Polyester Wall when it comes to FAs?

Filing a false police report is a serious crime.

Also I'm pretty sure that the cops aren't going to cuff someone if they are not being arrested.

Possibly alleged theft happened on the aircraft when you were asleep? And the alleged thieves were taken away as they were identified by crew, air marshal or other passengers? You know, on board thefts on intercontinental flights were increasing because the aircraft cabin has inadequate security cameras (as well as lighting, as most flights would be dark during flight for hours), not to mention people are easy to loose concentration on long trips. You know, people put valuables in the bag and store on the overhead then forget about them for 8 hours. It fits in the characteristic that on board thieves work as a small group of 2-3, and mostly male, spread in different cabins (i.e. steal in business cabin where the most valuable are and hide it in the coach section with someone so it can not be traced).

Just my guess.

Casper is nice and but not THAT nice ;)

Again, I'd actually love to believe their might have been a crime and understand what I might need to modify in the future e.g. the theft theory. If there was a serious crime, and they were handcuffed and potentially charged or arrested, shouldn't there be a public record available.

I also think FA have a lot of latitude to what "interference with flight crew instructions "means.so I was not suggesting they exaggerated, they just hold all the cards in any onboard situation and and a simple conversation request etc can go downhill quickly