Matt Patterson/AP/File
Frontier Airlines planes stand at the gates of Denver International Airport in Denver on September 25, 2021.
CNN –
According to the airline and police, a passenger who was asked to disembark a Frontier Airlines plane departing from Denver was later reported for assaulting an airline employee with an intercom phone.
While Frontier Airlines Flight 708 awaited departure from Denver International Airport, the airline’s main hub, for Tampa early Sunday, the passenger “became aggressive on board and was ordered to disembark,” the statement said. “As she got off the plane, she picked up an intercom phone and used it to hit a flight attendant.”
In a statement to CNN, Denver Police said the passenger had been charged with assault in connection with the incident.
According to Frontier, the flight departed for Tampa around 5:30 a.m. local time after the woman was removed from the plane. The flight departed Denver nearly four hours late, according to FlightAware tracking data.
According to the police, the passenger was able to book another flight home after his release.
It is unclear what behavior led to the passenger being initially asked to exit the plane.
Denver International Airport told CNN in an email Sunday that “sorry” it had “no information about the flight.”
In November, a Frontier Airlines flight from Cincinnati made an emergency landing in Atlanta after a passenger who was later arrested was seen with a box cutter, an airline spokesman said.
The passenger had a second box cutter in his carry-on, the Transportation Security Administration told CNN at the time.
The Federal Aviation Authority has received reports of at least 670 unruly airline passengers in 2023 as of May 14, according to statistics from the US Transportation Administration.
According to the FAA, 2,455 unruly passengers were reported in 2022.