Woman arrested at airport for refusing to wear mask and attempting to punch passenger

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A woman was arrested at an airport in the US after allegedly refusing to wear a mask and attempting to punch another passenger.

Las Vegas resident Katrina Alspaugh was escorted from McCarran International Airport in Nevada on 21 November after she was accused of getting into a fight with a fellow traveller and a member of cabin crew onboard an Allegiant Airlines flight.

According to the arrest report from the Metropolitan Police Department, released on Tuesday, officers were first requested to come to security after Alspaugh allegedly held up a fist in an attempt to hit another passenger.

She refused to give her name and was allowed to continue onwards to the gate after the traveller said they would not press charges.

However, police were called upon again after a flight attendant onboard had to remove Alspaugh from the aircraft for “causing a disturbance”, according to the report.

She shouted expletives as she was escorted from the airport and was charged with one count of public conduct at an airport, before being released from jail shortly after.

It’s the latest in a long line of incidents of unruly passengers on planes, particularly in the States.

A fine of more than $40,000 (£29,876) was recently proposed for a US airline passenger who allegedly drank their own alcohol on a flight before sexually assaulting a crew member and smoking marijuana in the plane toilet.

The Federal Aviation Administration released details of the proposed fine for a Southwest Airlines passenger who “drank their own alcohol during the flight, and continued to do so after a flight attendant told the passenger that was prohibited.”

The FAA reports that the same passenger then “sexually assaulted [a] flight attendant” and “entered the lavatory and smoked marijuana”.

It’s just one of eight civil penalties laid out by the US aviation body in a release earlier this week, amounting to $161,823 (£120,883) in total.

In other cases, a JetBlue customer “drank alcohol that the airline did not serve to him” and “urinated on the lavatory floor, verbally abused the flight crew and refused to follow crew instructions to wear a facemask,” resulting in a suggested $24,000 fine.