A man accused of punching a flight attendant later kicked a police officer in the groin and spat at officers escorting him off a plane in Texas, according to a new report released by an FBI agent.
Keith Edward Fagiana is charged with interfering with the flight crew and faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted. He is scheduled to make his first federal court appearance on Monday in Amarillo, Texas.
Faggiana was a passenger on an American Airlines flight from Fort Worth, Texas, to Bozeman, Montana, on Wednesday. The pilots landed the plane in Amarillo. The FBI agent’s account was in unsealed court documents Friday.
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A flight attendant told the FBI that another passenger complained that Faggiana was kicking his seat violently. The flight attendant said that when she asked Fagiana to stop, the man cursed at her, punched her in the stomach, then stood up and hit her three times.
The attendant and other passengers subdued the man and placed flex cuffs on him until the plane landed in Amarillo.
An FBI agent said in an affidavit that while officers were placing steel cuffs on Faggiana, he spit at the officers and kicked one. They put a “spit mask” on his face.
The agent wrote that Faggiana said he did not remember anything about the flight, but “admitted that he had drunk some ‘Captain Morgan’ – a brand of rum – at the bar before the flight.
It was not clear whether Fagiana had a lawyer; None were listed in court records Friday. The confrontation with the flight attendant was captured on video taken by another passenger.
“Stop stop stop stop. What the (expletive) are you doing?” The flight attendant screamed at a man hitting on her.
Airlines reported more than 2,000 incidents of unruly passengers to the Federal Aviation Administration. That’s down from a peak of about 6,000 in 2021, when fewer people were traveling because of the pandemic.
In one of the most serious cases, a California woman was sentenced to 15 months in prison and ordered to pay nearly US$26,000 in restitution for punching a Southwest Airlines flight attendant in the mouth and breaking her tooth. to be ordered.