American arrested after brawling on flight from Tokyo

Domestic carriers aren’t the only ones experiencing periodic turbulent passenger incidents, apparently.

A video recorded on an All Nippon Airways flight Monday captured a fistfight that broke out between two male passengers.

The brawl was captured by Corey Hour, a Phoenix-based videographer who was sitting a few rows behind the men. The plane was scheduled to fly from Tokyo’s Narita International Airport to Los Angeles International Airport but had not yet taken off when a man in a red shirt abruptly turned around and told a passenger in a gray T-shirt that he was “going to kill him,” according to Hour.

“He literally just flipped,” Hour told The Washington Post by phone early Tuesday morning. “Nobody knows why.”

According to Hour’s video, what ensues is an intense exchange of punches as the two go at each other.

“Someone help!” the man in the gray shirt yells. “This guy is crazy!”

“I’ll kill you!” the man in the red shirt yells.

Around them, passengers look shocked as flight attendants try to stop the fight and separate the men. In the background, a child can be heard crying, and at least one woman gets out of her seat to get farther from the scene.

At one point, several flight attendants manage to move the man in the red shirt toward the front of the plane, where he briefly turns back to shout something about “America.” (“Did he just yell ‘America?’ ” one passenger asks out loud.) However, the man soon returns and resumes fighting with the same passenger.

When a female flight attendant tries to break up the brawl again, she gets caught up in some of the blows.

Hour said that is when he stopped filming and intervened.

“It was intense, and we had to step in,” he told The Post. Hour said the man in the red shirt yelled at him: “You think I’m crazy? What about the government!”

“He was actually predominantly talking about the government and corruption, but he wasn’t specifying which government,” Hour added.

After leaving the plane, the unruly passenger reportedly choked a male All Nippon Airways employee, according to Japan Today, and was arrested and charged with assault. He was identified only as a 44-year-old American man.