Co-workers who duct taped American Airlines passenger to plane seat reveal what it was like

The passengers who helped to restrain a man on an American Airlines plane using duct tape last week have now described the chaos in huge detail. 

During American Airlines flight 618 from Dallas to Newark on Thursday (3rd September), a man who has now been identified as Arthur “Layne” Lundeen, 67, allegedly started a racist and homophobic rant, which then turned physical and violent. 

Two passengers sitting in the rows behind, Richard Olenick and Juan Mejia, used duct tape to keep the man in his seat. Olenick owns a gun shop in New Jersey and Meija is his employee. They’ve worked together for four years and were heading home from a gun expo in Nevada.

“[The] gentleman sitting two rows behind us started becoming belligerent, making derogatory remarks to the staff of American Airlines and other passengers, racial slurs, vulgar language, very offensive to the women,” Mejia told ABC. Olenick said Mejia “got up right away and jumped in the seat right next to the passenger and began working on restraining him in order to keep the situation contained”.

“Just like a light switch, all of a sudden, it went from quiet to yelling and chaos,” Mejia alleged to CBS News. “I turned around to look, and the poor gentleman that was sitting next to him in the aisle seat, the individual had his hands around his neck and was, like, assaulting him.

“[Lundeen] bit my hand. He didn’t break skin, just left teeth marks on my hand. We were covered in his blood. He was bleeding quite a bit from cuts that he inflicted on himself.”

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Richard Olenick (@richardolenick)

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The pair put zip ties around the man’s hands and secured him to his seat with duct tape. Olenick then sat on the man’s lap for 15 minutes before the plane made an emergency landing in Baltimore, Maryland. At one point, he tried to return to his seat but had to go back “because the man started acting up again,” Olenick told CNN.

In another interview with Daily Voice, the gun shop owner said: “Everyone on the entire plane was on alert that something was not right, but we didn’t know what was going on or why.” He added that it was a “pretty volatile situation for a while” and “safety was definitely a concern”. But it was never a question of whether to step in and help or not.

“I knew we were going to be doing this together, it wasn’t a thought,” he said. “I’ve got his back and he’s got mine. It went the way it did because we have a good relationship and we understood each other and neither of us was going to let the other down.”

Olenick revealed that Lundeen was “still fighting” throughout the “entire process”. At one point, he turned and said the plane was going to crash and they were all going to die, which put Olenick on edge, as he doesn’t like flying.  

“Everything was fine, until it wasn’t,” he told FOX 10. “When you’re on a plane, it’s different than when you are on the ground, you can’t retreat, there are not a lot of options.”

Lundeen was removed from the plane, arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and second-degree assault “for incidents that occurred aboard the aircraft at BWI Airport,” Maryland Transportation Authority Police said. He has now been released and is due to appear in court on 19th October, and has since lost his job in real estate. The investigation by the FBI is still ongoing. 

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Featured image credit: @richardolenick/Instagram