It came out of the clear blue sky. Two men threw punches across rows of seats on an All Nippon Airways (ANA) flight from Tokyo to Los Angeles. Even a flight attendant got in the mix.
On Monday, Corey Hour, an Arizona-based photographer and cinematographer, captured footage of two unidentified men brawling on ANA Flight NH6 at Tokyo’s Narita International Airport just minutes before takeoff.
According to Hour, while the plane was still boarding, he heard one man in a red shirt turn around and tell another man that he was “going to kill him.”
“He literally just flipped,” Hour told the Washington Post. “Nobody knows why.”
“Someone, help!” a man in a black shirt can be heard yelling in between blows. “This guy is crazy!”
“I’ll kill you!” the man in the red shirt yells back.
Children can be heard crying as flight attendants rush in to stop the fight.
Hour said the man wearing black was only fighting defensively and “wasn’t trying to start anything,” according to KNBC. “He was a very calm, collected individual.”
After taking several hits to the face, the man in red was removed by the female flight attendants.
Moments later, the man in the now ripped red shirt returned for a rematch. This time, when the female flight attendant got between the men, she was hit in the face by the man in red.
At that point, Hour stopped filming and got up to intervene in the fight. But as soon as he approached the man in the red shirt, Hour claims he backed away, refusing to fight.
“It was intense, and we had to step in,” Hour told the Washington Post, adding that the man in the red shirt yelled: “You think I’m crazy? What about the government?”
Hour told ABC Radio that the man seemed to “have a strong hate for the government."
After leaving the plane, the man in the red shirt was arrested and charged with assault after choking an employee at the airport, according to Japan Today.
A statement released by the airline after the incident confirms the man was “dealt with appropriately by local law enforcement," according to KGO.
Hour told the Post that the flight, which had already been delayed due to weather conditions, was further delayed while airline employees unloaded all the checked bags from the flight to remove the man’s luggage before taking off. The flight finally left an hour and 40 minutes late.
Hour later tweeted that the crew and passengers “handled the situation with grace and respect” and “did the best they could to diffuse the situation.” However, after talking with the other passengers, he tweeted that no one was able to figure out why the fight happened in the first place.