Melvin Durai
I do not fly often, but next time I take a flight with my family, I’m going to carry a pair of boxing gloves with me — just in case a fight breaks out. I believe in non-violence, but if punches are being thrown aboard a plane, I’ll grab the boxing gloves from my carry-on bag, put them on my wife’s hands and say, “Protect the family please!”
In case you think that it’s a man’s duty to protect his family, let me remind you that two-thirds of India’s Olympic boxing medals have been won by women. But the main point I’m trying to make is that it’s important to protect ourselves when we’re flying. That’s because the chances of someone getting a punch on a plane are greater than the chances of someone getting lunch on a plane. I don’t know the actual statistics, but in recent years, I’ve come across more stories about fights on planes than about fights on buses and trains. The latest brawl occurred on a Jet2 flight from Antalya, Turkey, to Manchester, England.
A video shared widely on social media shows men and women of all ages pushing, shoving and punching each other. One man has another man in a headlock, having watched one too many mixed martial arts (MMA) fights. The fight, which occurred about three hours into the five-hour flight, caused the pilot to divert the flight to Brussels, Belgium, whereupon police boarded the plane to remove two unruly passengers. “They were both offloaded by police in Brussels and the flight continued to Manchester,” the British budget airline said in the statement. “We can confirm that the two disruptive passengers will be banned from flying with us for life, and we will also vigorously pursue them to recover the costs that we incurred as a result of this diversion.” Instead of diverting the plane, it would have been far less costly and less disruptive to simply eject the two unruly passengers in midair. (Give them a parachute, of course. Let them fight over it on the way down.)
One eyewitness, speaking to the Sun newspaper, blamed the fight on a passenger who had been drinking on the plane and was making racist comments about the Pakistani passengers around him. He was also upset that he couldn’t buy cigarettes on the plane. The only reasonable solution would have been to move this passenger to the back of the plane, preferably into a seat equipped with an ejection system. This is hardly the first time that a fight has broken out on a Jet2 flight. Back in 2022, the airline asked a pair of brothers to pay more than £50,000 after their “aggressive and violent behaviour” caused a flight to be diverted. Five years earlier, a couple going on a holiday turned on each other, using abusive language and throwing punches. The brothers and the couple were banned for life, joining more than 100 other passengers who have received lifetime bans from Jet2 and are now probably flying on Jet3. In 2025, the Federal Aviation Administration in the United States received 1,621 reports of unruly passengers. The figure is probably much higher worldwide.
Not all unruly behaviour results in punches being thrown. Sometimes it’s curse words being thrown around, other times it’s food. Indeed, just last month, an unruly man on a Southwest Airlines flight in the US threw a container of food at another passenger who was recording him on a cell phone. The unruly man had lost his cool after suspecting that another man was flirting with his wife. (Flirting on planes is never a good idea. If you must flirt, do it at the airport, just in case you need to run away.) When people are in close quarters, it’s not surprising that they sometimes get on each other’s nerves. It doesn’t help that some passengers have been drinking. Perhaps Jet2 and other airlines should consider limiting the amount of alcohol they serve. No one ever blamed a fight on a passenger who had been drinking too much Fanta.