Unruly Passenger Duct-Taped on Flight: Who Is Arthur Lundeen?
He has been charged with second-degree assault and disorderly conduct in Maryland.The incident comes as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) continues to record more than 1,000 reports of unruly passenger behavior each year, although numbers remain far below a surge seen during the COVID-19 pandemic. Juan Mejia, a passenger and former law enforcement officer, said that Lundeen became increasingly belligerent and used vulgar language and racial slurs during the flight. Mejia and another passenger, Richard Olenick, intervened after the situation allegedly became physical."Just like a light switch, all of a sudden, it went from quiet to yelling and chaos," Mejia told CBS News.
- ▪He has been charged with second-degree assault and disorderly conduct in Maryland.The incident comes as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) continues to record more than 1,000 reports of unruly passenger behavior each year, although n
- ▪Juan Mejia, a passenger and former law enforcement officer, said that Lundeen became increasingly belligerent and used vulgar language and racial slurs during the flight.
- ▪Mejia and another passenger, Richard Olenick, intervened after the situation allegedly became physical."Just like a light switch, all of a sudden, it went from quiet to yelling and chaos," Mejia told CBS News.
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| Original publisher | Newsweek |
| Canonical URL | https://www.newsweek.com/unruly-passenger-duct-taped-on-flight-who-is-arthur-lundeen-12409672 |
| Publication time | Sun, 06 Sep 2026 07:21:09 -0400 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-06T11:34:56.443Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-06T11:34:56.443Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
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| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
By Aliss HighamReporter0ShareNewsweek is a Trust Project memberSee more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.An American Airlines passenger was arrested after allegedly becoming violent on a flight from Dallas to Newark, leading other passengers to restrain him with duct tape and zip ties.Arthur Layne Lundeen, 67, of Arizona, was arrested after American Airlines Flight 618 was diverted to Baltimore Washington International (BWI) Airport on Thursday night after he allegedly became violent and used racial slurs.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Newsweek.
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