The flight to London returned to the airport after discarding the passenger mask

The American Airlines flight from Miami, USA to London, England, had to return to the US airport because a passenger refused to wear a mask during the flight.

Flight AAL 38 took off on Wednesday night (19), but had to return an hour after take-off, according to the Flighradar24 website.

Leah Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for the Miami Police Department, told The New York Times that police officers who approached the plane’s passengers at the Miami International Airport after the flight returned picked up a 40 – year – old woman from the plane. “Despite the incident, she was not arrested,” he said.

The Boeing 777, which was carrying 129 passengers and 14 crew, was flying over the North Carolina coast when it passed more than 800 km, more than 7,000 km, separating Miami from London, aviation observers said.

American Airlines said in a statement that the flight was diverted due to a “disruptive customer who refused to comply with a federal mask requirement”. This chapter is another in a long list of controversies regarding the use of masks on planes exposed during epidemics.

In October, a passenger was accused of hitting an American Airlines flight attendant in the nose, causing her to have a concussion by having to wear a mask. The airline’s chief executive said the episode of violence on a domestic flight between California and New York was “one of the worst scenes of misconduct we have ever seen.”

In May, a California woman on a Southwest Airlines flight tied her seat belt, took out a tray and told the flight attendant to break three of the flight attendant’s teeth, repeatedly stabbing the flight attendant.

According to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, there have been thousands of other episodes involving unruly travelers in recent years. From January 1 to last Tuesday (18), the company said it had received 151 reports of unruly passengers and 92 related to the use of safety masks. Last year, the agency received 5,981 reports of unruly travelers and 4,290 mask-related incidents.