American Airlines flight 3921 from Chicago O’Hare to Manchester, New Hampshire near Boston diverted to Buffalo on Wednesday when a passenger urinated in the aisle of the Embraer E-170 aircraft operated by wholly-owned regional carrier Envoy Air.
Niagara Frontier Transit Authority Police responded to Buffalo Airport’s gate 2, where the plane eventually arrived. One of the officers boarded the aircraft and was told by a flight attendant that the man “exposed himself and urinated on the flight,” according to the criminal complaint.
The flight attendant identified the passenger, who was then placed in custody and taken off the aircraft. Another passenger who was seated in row 2 had taken photos of the man exposing himself and urinating, and those were shared with police.
Once at the police station, the passenger submitted to an interview, despite being Mirandized, in which he explained that:
He was flying Portland – Chicago – Manchester He likes to drink jack and cokes He drank several before his flight out of Portland, and several more during his layover in Chicago He also had several more on the flight from Chicago to Manchester He got up during the flight to use the restroom – and was “flicking the bean” when he returned “due to having a medical urination problem.”
We’ll take “several” to mean ‘more than two’ in each case, and that would mean that the passenger drank at least nine jack and cokes.
The 25 year old man was federally charged with indecent exposure. Since this happened inflight, in the “special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States” he is charged under District of Columbia criminal code. D.C. Code 22-1312 states, “It is unlawful for a person, in public, to make an obscene or indecent exposure of his or her genitalia or anus.”
It appears this first class passenger wasn’t a first class passenger. It’s also hardly the first time that this has happened, or even the first time on American Airlines. A man urinated on a seatmate during an American Airlines flight to Delhi back in March. And in one of my favorite cases, an American Airlines passenger had to be told that there was a lavatory on board and not to just use the seat and that man claimed not to be drunk ‘just chewing gum’.