'Belligerent' passenger arrested after hitting flight attendant with intercom phone, Frontier Airlines says
DENVER -- A "belligerent" passenger who was asked to leave a plane departing from Denver was later arrested for striking an airline employee with an intercom phone, Frontier Airlines said in a statement Sunday.
While Frontier Airlines Flight 708 awaited an early Sunday departure to Tampa from Denver International Airport, the airline's main hub, the female passenger "became belligerent onboard and was asked to deplane," the statement said. "As she was deplaning, she picked up an intercom phone and struck a flight attendant with it."
Denver law enforcement arrested the woman and the flight left for Tampa around 5:30 a.m. local time, according to Frontier. The flight left Denver nearly four hours late, according to FlightAware tracking data.
It's not clear what behavior led to the passenger initially being asked to leave the plane. CNN has reached out to Denver police for more information.
The Denver International Airport told CNN in an email Sunday that it, "unfortunately," didn't "have information on the flight."
In November, a Frontier Airlines flight out of Cincinnati made an emergency landing in Atlanta after a passenger, who was later arrested, was seen with a box cutter, an airline spokesperson said.
The passenger had a second box cutter in his carry-on baggage, the Transportation Security Administration told CNN at the time.
The Federal Aviation Authority has received reports of at least 670 unruly airline passengers in 2023 as of May 14, the US transportation agency's statistics showed.
There were 2,455 unruly passengers reported in 2022, according to the FAA.