SWISS plane turned back due to abusive passenger 

One crew member was injured in the incident and taken to hospital for assessment KEYSTONE/© KEYSTONE / SALVATORE DI NOLFI

The captain of a Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) plane cancelled a flight to Zurich on Sunday because of an abusive passenger.  

According to SWISS, there was an incident on board involving crew members and the aircraft was turned back to Newark in the US state of New Jersey.  

The passenger became abusive towards crew members shortly after the Airbus aircraft took off, a SWISS spokesperson told the Keystone-SDA news agency on Monday, and the aircraft was turned back because of the man’s unruly behaviour. The incident was first reported online by Blick.  

+ The controversy behind SWISS flights between Geneva and Zurich

One crew member was injured in the incident, the spokesperson added, and taken to hospital for assessment.  

During the flight, a loud scream was suddenly heard, a passenger wrote on the social media platform Reddit, after which cabin crew immediately ran to the front of the aircraft.  

The man was reportedly led away by police in Newark and the flight was subsequently cancelled. SWISS did not give a reason for the outburst.

There were 236 passengers and 13 crew members on board the LX19 flight, with passengers to be transported to Zurich on the next possible flight. 

Adapted from German by DeepL/kp/jdp 

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