Summary
Orthodox Jewish passenger Yisroel Liebb filed a federal lawsuit claiming a United Airlines pilot forcibly removed him from an airplane bathroom during a January 2024 flight from Tulum to Houston, exposing his genitalia to passengers.
Liebb said he was experiencing constipation and had been in the bathroom for about 30 minutes when the pilot broke the lock and dragged him out.
After landing, Customs and Border Protection officers detained Liebb and another passenger, allegedly making derogatory remarks about their religion.
United Airlines and CBP declined to comment.
Airplanes have two pilots (edit:
and most commonly, the less senior one is the one physically flying the planeI am wrong). It does happen that one or the other of them will leave the cockpit to deal with something in an emergency (which this is, since they can’t land the plane until it is dealt with). Presumably the captain is the one that dealt with Mr. Poosticks.We just swap who flies each leg, I’ll do one, the other pilot will do the next, and so on. Seniority really doesn’t play into it at all. Usually we don’t leave the flight deck to deal with emergencies, we rely on the cabin crew for that.
I need more coffee…
“Ok this time I’ll control the left side, you do the right!”
Oh, TIL. Somehow I thought it was usually the more senior person was monitoring and less senior person was flying, but I guess that is not the case.