Man's furious reaction to crying baby on flight has sparked a debate after going viral
A man went viral for all the wrong reasons recently after he was filmed launching into a furious rant about a crying baby on a plane.
A Southwest Airlines flight to Florida ended up hitting delays due to weather and had to be diverted to Orlando International Airport, but inside the plane an entirely different storm was brewing.
With everyone stuck in their seats and having an unpleasantly bumpy ride due to the weather, the mood inside the plane wasn't great and to make things exponentially worse one man lost his temper with a baby quite spectacularly.
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The whole incident was filmed by Mark Grabowski as the man swore and shouted from his seat, prompting airline staff attempting to calm him down.
The man kept shouting to 'shut the baby up' and pleaded with staff to do something about the noise before a flight attendant eventually decided to contact the authorities.
"Can you calm the child down, please? I had headphones on. I was sleeping!" The man shouted from his seat before launching into a tirade filled with copious swearing.
"Why is the baby yelling? I'm not screaming. Want me to scream? I'll f**king scream. Please stop the baby."
"We are in a f**king tin can with a baby in a f**king echo chamber. If you want to talk to me about being f**king ok. We are not in Florida yet, you cannot do what the f**k you feel like."
The shouting continued in this vein for some time, with the man continuing to rant even as the baby's cries could no longer be heard and airline staff eventually offered the man a clear choice.
When the plane finally landed at Orlando International, the shouting passenger was given a choice to either get off the plane or be forcibly removed once everyone else had disembarked.
Orlando police escorted the man off the plane but made no arrests.
A spokesperson for Southwest Airlines said: "We commend our crew for exhibiting outstanding professionalism while handling a challenging situation, and we offer our apologies to the other customers onboard who had to experience such unacceptable behavior."
The whole incident has sparked a debate after the video went viral online with some reckoning the passenger was out of order while others praised him for speaking the truth they dared not utter.
One person said they 'get his frustration but it's a child' pointing out that 'he made it worse' by yelling even louder himself.
Another said the man 'can't be serious' while a third said 'this wasn't the way to handle this' even if they understood the frustration of the situation.
Some agreed with him that someone needed to do something to quieten down the crying baby, with one saying 'everyone on the plane was thinking it but he was the one to say it' even though they thought he 'said it badly'.
Another quoted the man's reply of 'so is the baby' when passengers told him 'you're yelling' and said 'he got y'all there'.
Others wondered if the flight attendants could have done more to help quieten down the baby since being stuck inside a giant metal bee with a crying child is pretty much nobody's idea of fun.
Joe Harker