Video of the altercation Photo: twitter.com/myfox8

A Bengals fan has attracted attention for the wrong reasons after a video surfaced of him being escorted off a plane in Cleveland on Wednesday night after a conversation about the football team led to a fight.

We know the whole city is excited about the Bengals being in the Super Bowl for the first time in over 30 years, however, we can’t be getting into fights at the airport about it.

According to FOX 8 in Cleveland, a Frontier Airlines jetliner was preparing for takeoff on the way to Phoenix at the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport when two passengers began fighting about the Bengals and their Super Bowl chances.

Not shockingly, at least one of the men was drunk. FOX 8 reports that a Frontier employee told him off for it.

Jason Brake, the Frontier passenger who recorded a video of the incident, told FOX 8 that the unruly passenger said earlier that the airline employees were “discriminating against him because he possibly did have too much to drink.”

Watch the full video here. 

FOX 8 reports that witnesses said the man lunged at an airline worker while being taken off the plane.

In the video, as the man was being escorted off, he shouted to the plane: “I was a Bengals fan, I was the only Bengals fan. I’m not a bad person, bro, I drank a little too much, and one guy back there had a problem that I was drinking too much.”

At the start of the video, another passenger has the unruly man in a chokehold position. Brakes told FOX 8 that he believes this caused the situation to escalate.

“When I watched that, I was like, ‘OK, this guy is assaulting somebody that they’re trying to remove from the plane.’ The guy is not qualified to handle that situation and it could have made it worse, and you’ve got all these people that are stuck there and there’s going to be a stampede to try to get out of a little small door,” Brakes told FOX 8.

The flight finally left for Phoenix and Brakes reports that the captain and crew advised not buying and drinking alcohol on board a plan. Brake says ,“I mean, alcohol and flying just really don’t mix.”

FOX 8 reports that there are pending charges against the passenger and the Cleveland Division of Police have the video.

A statement was released by Frontier the day after the incident:

“As Flight 2415 scheduled from Cleveland to Phoenix on February 9 was at the gate prior to takeoff, a passenger was behaving disruptively and was asked to exit the aircraft by a gate agent. The passenger became increasingly aggressive, physically assaulting the gate agent. The passenger was subsequently arrested by local enforcement and has been permanently placed on our Prevent Departure list.”

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This article appears in Feb 9-22, 2022.