Spirit Airlines is enduring some unexpected press this week after an Instagram video of a full-on brawl started making the usual rounds. Paul Berry, a Spirit Airlines spokesperson, tells the Los Angeles Times that five women were ultimately involved in the fight on Flight 141 from Baltimore to Los Angeles. The music-inspired scuffle, NBC News reports, apparently started with one passenger telling two women who "appeared to be intoxicated" to un-crank the volume on their purportedly antiquated listening device.
As additional passengers asked the women to turn down the music, Berry says they refused and instead taunted them. "Then to provoke the other customer they were holding up their boom box in the air, waving it around," Berry tells the Times. As a second group of presumably anti-volume passengers approached the area, the interaction quickly shifted into what can only fairly be categorized as a mini-melee.
Though local authorities were promptly notified and responded by removing all five women involved, Spirit Airlines confirms that they were all released without charge following an hour-long discussion. The FBI, says NBC, was also briefly involved in the incident though they also declined to pursue anything beyond that.
Of course, this widely 'grammed brouhaha doesn't mark the first time that claustrophobia finally got the best of annoyed passengers. Last August, one Twitter-minded passenger united a nation by livetweeting a couple's messy mid-flight breakup. As with any profound love story, that potentially horrendous encounter ended with the Hitchcockian twist of a drunken makeout session.
