WASHINGTON -- An international flight was escorted back to Washington, D.C., by U.S. Air Force F-16 fighter jets after an argument between two passengers over a reclining seat erupted into a brawl, The Washington Post reported late Tuesday.

According to sources, not long after the Ghana-bound United Airlines Boeing 767 -- with 144 passengers on board -- took off from Dulles International Airport at 10:44 p.m. local time Sunday, one passenger reclined his seat into the lap of the person behind.

A fight broke out -- with one passenger striking the other in the head -- before a flight attendant and fellow passenger intervened.

A United spokesman told the Post that the pilot was unsure of the extent of the in-flight incident and decided, for safety's sake, to go back to Dulles.

As the plane returned, an air traffic controller asked about the passenger at the center of the disturbance, with pilots replying, "The passenger is not secured at this time; the passenger has settled down, though, but an assault has taken place, but at this time he is not secured."

As a precaution, two F-16s were scrambled from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.

Air Force fighter jets have been held on standby to assist with such disturbances since September 11, 2001, and a rise in terrorist attempts on planes.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/06/01/f-16s-escort-united-airlines-flight-fight-erupts-reclining-seat/#ixzz1O51iN4sB

Seems like a waist of money over something basic like a fistfight, not to mention the situation was undercontrol. What the hell is a couple F-16's gonna do in that situation anyways?

What are the F-16's going to do, shoot the plane down?

That was probably Obama's plan.

Lpdon, do yo9u really think it's a waist of money? There was a serious disturbance on the airplane. That's exactly what happened on 9/11 when each plane that was hijacked. What if the same lunatic decided to attack other people or sabotage the flight. I fly quite often and believe the Captain did the right thing and followed proper protocol.

As far as the fighter planes. They are there to shoot the passenger plane down in the event it became hijacked. If it can be prevented nobody is ever going fly a plane into a building here again and the plane will be shot down well before it reaches a populated area.

I never said the captain was wrong, I said out was over kill sening 16's up after it for a simple altercation.

And why exactly DON'T we have armed Air Marshals on every flight? They don't necessarily need to carry guns to defend people. They can use pepper spray, tazers, and there is rubber bullets as well as special dense plastic bullets too so holes are not punched inside the jet.

The TSA cannot protect us while we are in flight!

I bet the F-16s were going to shoot at the people fighting inside the jumbo jet. One hit with a 20mm cannon will end any fight.

Because it's more expensive to send up F-16's so thats Obamas choice.

maybe not...to have a TSA agent on every flight would cost the government millions of dollars per year


from yahoo answers:"On any given day, more than 87,000 flights are in the skies in the United States. Only one-third are commercial carriers, like American, United or Southwest. On an average day, air traffic controllers handle 28,537 commercial flights (major and regional airlines), 27,178 general aviation flights (private planes), 24,548 air taxi flights (planes for hire), 5,260 military flights and 2,148 air cargo flights (Federal Express, UPS, etc.). At any given moment, roughly 5,000 planes are in the skies above the United States. In one year, controllers handle an average of 64 million takeoffs and landings.

For every one flight you see listed on an airport monitor, two you don't see show up on air traffic controllers' screens. It would take approximately 7,300 airport terminal monitors to show all the flights controllers handle in a single day and approximately 460 monitors to show the number of flights being handled at any one time."

so it cost roughly 30 dollars per hour, i'm guessing thats what they make, times 24 hours in a day, times 30,000 flights per day...

(30x24)x30,000 = 21,600,000.00 per day, bare minimum, and that doesn't include out of country flights...or hotel costs, food, car rentals

bin laden chalks up yet another win, this time from the grave. his only goal was to upset our western way of life and man has he succeded. we spend hundreds of billions on "security enhancements" since 911. we continue to throw more good money after bad when some idiot like richard reed tries to light a shoe bomb. he didn't even succeed in blowing himself up much less the airplane yet usama was cracking up in his cave as we all now must take our shoes off at airport security. and now you folks laugh at f16s escorting an africa bound boeing back to base because of a cabin disturbance??? what took you all so long to see the humor in all of this. usama at least died laughing.