Woman Boards JetBlue Flight To Punta Cana. Then The Plane Has To Turn Around To JFK Because Of What Passenger Did: ‘No Fly List Is Not Enough’

You’re in your airplane seat, excited to finally be headed to your destination after delays, when suddenly the captain announces the plane is turning around.

Not because of weather. Not because of mechanical issues—but because of one passenger who couldn’t handle being told “no.”

A viral TikTok showed what it really takes to get a plane turned around mid-flight and how it upsetsoff everyone on board.

Unruly Passenger Causes Emergency Landing

Content creator Jasmyn Destine (@jasmyndestine5) captured the moment a JFK-bound JetBlue flight had to turn around because of an “unruly entitled” passenger. Her viral video has more than 1.6 million views.

“Pov: literally just trying to do my lashes on the way to DR when our flight gets turned around because of this unruly entitled yt man,” the text overlay on the video summarizes.

In the viral video, Jasmyn applies lash clusters when she hears the captain’s announcement.

“There’s no other way to put this. I need to be the bearer of bad news here, but we do need to go back to JFK for a unforeseen circumstance that’s arisen,” he says in the video, explaining the plane was headed to Punta Cana. “It’s not a mechanical issue. It’s not a safety issue. We do need to go back.”

He explains they’ll be on the ground in about 45 minutes and apologizes for the inconvenience, noting the flight was already late. The captain’s tone is resigned.

In the video, Jasmyn, while still seated, calls out the unruly passenger directly.

“You was acting like a child; you were literally acting like a child the whole time because you couldn’t get what you wanted on a on a plane full of people,” she tells him. “You were throwing a fit like a child; you threw a piece of paper at the flight attendant. And now we’re going back to the airport because of you.”

So What Really Happened?

In a follow-up video, Jasmyn provides the full backstory on what led up to the situation.

The problems started before takeoff. The passenger, she says, got on the plane and sat in a seat that wasn’t his. Jasmyn says that flight attendants made announcements asking everyone to sit in their assigned seats. When the actual ticketholder arrived, she says the man moved to another seat that also wasn’t his.

A flight attendant approached him, and he started “talking crazy” to the flight attendant, Jasmyn continues.

“He’s got a mad attitude,” Jasmyn says.

The flight attendant had had enough and called a marshal onto the plane. The marshal calmly asked the passenger if he was going to comply or continue causing issues.

“He was like, ‘I’m already in my seat. So what more do you want from me?'” Jasmyn recalls.

The marshal asked him three more times “very clearly.” But the passenger kept being sarcastic. The marshal even told him, “There’s no need to be sarcastic. Like, it’s just a simple yes or no question.”

Eventually the marshal left, and the flight—already two hours delayed—finally took off, per Jasmyn.

But the drama wasn’t over. About 10 to 15 minutes into the air, she says the passenger started up again. Jasmyn says he’d moved to a different row with more legroom by the exit door. And the flight attendant, she continues, had to tell him again to go back to his assigned seat.

Jasmyn says the passenger kept arguing. So the flight attendant went to the front of the plane and came back with a yellow slip that seemed to be some kind of warning document. Jasmyn says the passenger took it, balled it up, and threw it back at the flight attendant.

“It literally bounced off his forehead,” Jasmyn says.

The flight attendant immediately got on the phone with the cockpit, she continues. Jasmyn says she turned to her boyfriend and predicted what would happen next: “They’re gonna make us go back. Watch.”

Fifteen minutes later, the captain made the announcement.

“Everyone in this section of the plane, at least the front of the section, they know exactly what the f—- going on because we’ve overheard. And we’ve seen it,” Jasmyn says.

Jasmyn recalls people being annoyed, kissing their teeth, clearly frustrated. Then things got even worse.

A woman sitting in the same row as the disruptive passenger (directly next to him) said, “F— you, man,” she recalls.

But the man’s response crossed a line.

“He was like, ‘F— me. Oh, f—- me. F— you.’” And he was like, ‘You’re lucky you’re a woman because if you were a man, I’d slap the s— out of you,'” Jasmyn recalls.

Jasmyn’s boyfriend immediately intervened. “I’m a man. Say that s— to me. Slap me. Slap the s— out of me,” he reportedly said.

Jasmyn says she started yelling to make sure everyone on the plane knew what had just happened. And a flight attendant came over to de-escalate the situation.

When police boarded the plane after it landed back at JFK, Jasmyn says the passenger claimed he’d been having a heart attack—which is why he was acting that way. But the woman he’d threatened to slap was a registered nurse who would have recognized the signs, according to Jasmyn.

The plane then had to wait at the gate for an hour because they needed a new pilot, she adds. Passengers who were already delayed by two hours ended up being “super duper late” because of what Jasmyn calls a completely avoidable situation.

“I don’t understand grown people that just don’t know how to control their f—— emotions,” she says.

The Rising Problem Of Air Rage

What happened on Jasmyn’s flight isn’t an isolated incident. It’s part of a dramatic surge in unruly passenger behavior since the pandemic. According to FAA data, there were nearly 6,000 reports of disruptive passengers in 2021, almost five times as many as the year before. While numbers have declined since that peak, incidents remain roughly twice as high as pre-pandemic levels.

“Incidents where airline passengers have disrupted flights with threatening or violent behavior are an ongoing problem and airlines have seen rapid growth in occurrences since 2021,” the FAA states.

The International Civil Aviation Organization classifies disruptive passengers into four levels, according to Business Insider.

The 4 Levels:

• Level 1 – Disruptive behavior: Verbally abusive conduct, including swearing, threatening others, or refusing to follow crew instructions.
• Level 2 – Physically abusive behavior: Hitting, grabbing, spitting, or other physical contact with passengers or crew.
• Level 3 – Life-threatening behavior: Violence so severe it could endanger someone’s life, or displaying/using a weapon.
• Level 4 – Attempted or actual breach of the cockpit: Trying to enter the flight deck without permission.

The passenger in Jasmyn’s video appears to have escalated from Level 1 (refusing seat assignments, verbal abuse) to Level 2 (throwing the warning slip at the flight attendant, threatening to slap a passenger).

The Street reports that TSA has issued warnings that passengers who “threaten, endanger, or harm Transportation Security Officers during screening” face criminal penalties and fines up to $13,910. For in-flight disturbances, the FAA can impose even steeper penalties.

“Interference with a crew member is a federal offense,” Jeff Price, an aviation professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver, told Colorado News and Culture. “Unruly passengers may find themselves under criminal prosecution and ultimately have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. It’s really not worth it.”

When a flight turns around mid-journey due to passenger behavior, airlines incur massive costs for fuel, crew hours, gate fees, and compensation for delayed passengers. Those costs can be passed on to the disruptive passenger through civil lawsuits in addition to any criminal penalties.

Commenters React

“No fly list is not enough. People need to start getting fined for the cost of everyone’s ticket,” a top comment read.

“The man next to you going through the seven stages of grief,” a person said.

“Imagine inconveniencing 200 people omg I would lose it,” another wrote.

“I heard someone calling a male Karen a Ken,” a commenter added.

BroBible reached out to Jasmyn via email and Instagram direct message and to JetBlue via email. We’ll be sure to update this if they respond.