This foul-mouthed passenger tried to make a statement — but ended up making an exit instead.
A United Airlines passenger’s on-the-ground meltdown blew up online, going viral after she unleashed a barrage of expletives at an unshakably calm flight attendant during a tarmac delay at Newark Liberty International Airport.
A fellow traveler caught the entire blow-up on camera, and the clip has been racking up attention fast—pulling in nearly 500,000 views on the mobile_app/ TikTok platform since it dropped on Nov. 10.
An angry passenger got booted from a commercial flight after unleashing a profanity-filled rant at the cabin crew during a brief delay, turning a minor holdup into a headline-making showdown. @haleyrose99/TikTok
"This woman went absolutely nuts and we had to return back to the gate to remove her," the passenger wrote in the caption, making it clear this was no ordinary flight delay.
In the clip, a blond woman wedged into the window seat awkwardly scoots out of her row—only to collide, quite literally, with a flight attendant striding down the aisle, setting the stage for an in-flight face-off no one saw coming.
The crew member hesitates but stays silent—yet the stubborn passenger erupts anyway, escalating the tension in the aisle.
The foul-mouthed passenger muttered a shocking insult about a flight attendant—right over her shoulder. @haleyrose99/TikTok
“I’m getting up. I’m allowed to stand up. When you keep us on the tarmac for an hour, I’m allowed to stand up,” the woman grouses.
The flight attendant simply steps aside, brushing it off with a calm, “No problem,” according to the video.
"Not a problem at all. Really not a problem for me to want to f–king stand. F–king c–ts," the passenger hisses under her breath as the flight attendant walks away.
Then, in a moment of instant karma, the irate passenger notices she’s on camera and goes completely silent. She averts her gaze from the phone, trying—and failing—to play it cool.
The woman eventually realized her entire meltdown had been caught on camera. @haleyrose99/TikTok
The witness who captured the chaos later gave an update, explaining that their flight to Charleston, South Carolina, had already been delayed three hours before boarding—and then sat on the tarmac for another hour and a half.
“So at this point, everyone’s just over it. You can feel the collective exhaustion. And then this woman just loses it and starts screaming the c-word over and over and over again. And everyone goes silent,” the TIkTokker said.
From there, other passengers tried—and failed—to calm her down. The TikTok creator said the woman “started spiraling” and eventually had to be forcibly escorted off the plane.
She added that a fellow passenger seated nearby tried to tell the screaming woman to “please chill”—which only seemed to make things explode even more.
Newark Liberty International Airport was hit hard with delays and cancellations amid the record-breaking government shutdown. Luiz C. Ribeiro
The TikTok creator said the screaming passenger began telling others to harm themselves and launched into a drawn-out rant about how hard her life supposedly is.
“And then the man behind me goes, ‘We all have somewhere to be, my mom’s funeral is tomorrow’ and that just kind of put everything into perspective for everyone. We’re all stressed, we all have our own things going on,” she said.
But even the man’s honesty wasn’t enough to calm things down.
"The crew then had the biggest guys on the plane sit next to her just in case she got physical," the witness recalled.
The woman was eventually escorted off the plane and left behind at Newark Airport. Bloomberg via Getty Images
“She put her sunglasses on [while being escorted off] and started going, ‘Thank God,'” she added.
The fellow passenger insisted that the flight attendants “were actual angels” throughout, and that “everybody stayed calm.”
In early November, the government was still stuck in its record-breaking shutdown, causing chaos at major airports across the U.S. as staffing shortages led to widespread delays.
