A TikTok of a man yelling at a Southwest Airlines flight attendant over a crying baby on an airplane has gone viral, sparking conversations about airplane conduct and bringing children on flights.
The video, which was filmed and posted by TikToker @mjgrabowski, apparently occurred during a flight to Orlando, Florida. According to the poster, the plane was in a holding pattern around Fort Lauderdale because of inclement weather. He illustrates this with a map indicating where the plane is going around in circles. When @mjgrabowski starts showing the airplane cabin, a man in the background talks to flight attendants as a baby cries. @mjgrabowski mainly keeps the camera on himself as he struggles (and fails) not to laugh and occasionally looks at his seatmates off-camera.
“I paid for a ticket to have a fucking comfortable flight,” the man says to the flight attendants. “That child has been crying for 40 minutes!”
@mjgrabowski ♬ original sound – bad_ideas_galore
The man complains about being woken up by the crying and tells the flight attendants to calm the child down.
“We in a fucking tin can with a baby in a goddamn echo chamber, and you want to talk to me about being fucking OK?” the man said. When a flight attendant tells him he’s yelling, he replies that the baby is yelling too.
In response, one flight attendant says he’s a man, indicating it’s a different situation.
“Did that motherfucker pay extra to yell?” he says in reply, which causes several passengers to start arguing with the man.
Eventually, the plane landed in Orlando, and according to @mjgrabowski, the man wouldn’t get off the plane, still fuming over the crying baby. After getting off the plane, he included footage of the main attempting to explain what happened to authorities.
“He tried to plead his case that he had a right to yell because there was two adults with the crying baby and he shouldn’t have been disturbed,” @mjgrabowski wrote over the video. It’s unclear what happened after the man walks away with police officers.
The original TikTok has been viewed more than 174,800 times, but Twitter reuploads of the incident have spread to millions of views.
Some people were amused by the fact that the man who took issue with the baby called them names.
But others weighed in about the situation itself and picked a side.
“I always wonder like do you THINK the parents want a crying child??” one person commented. “OBVIOUSLY NO!!! We are HYPER aware our child is screaming! Lol”
It’s easy to see why it’s gone so viral: It combines several instances where people have a lot of thoughts about verbal altercations, people causing a scene in public, and babies acting like babies (and all of the stress that might come with that on the parents’ part). And if it occurs on an airplane, it’s a guarantee.
“We do not have details on this flight to share but commend our flight crew for their professionalism and offer our apologies to the other customers onboard,” Southwest Airlines told Today.
