Woman punches flight attendant and knocks out her teeth

Woman punches flight attendant and knocks out her teeth
A woman who allegedly punched a Southwest Airlines flight attendant knocking her teeth out has been arrested and charged with felony battery.
Vyvianna Quinonez, 28, allegedly grew irate when she was told to buckle her seatbelt during a flight from Sacramento to San Diego on Sunday and punched the flight attendant in the face, KTXL reported.
Quinonez was escorted off the flight by Port of San Diego Harbor police as the flight attendant, who was not named, was pictured with a bloodied face and wheeled off the flight in a wheelchair.
The flight attendant lost two teeth and suffered other injuries to her face and was taken to Scripps Memorial Hospital, KFMB-TV reported. She was later released from the hospital and Southwest flew a friend to San Diego to be with her.
Cops charged Quinonez with felony battery causing serious bodily injury and she was released on a $35,000 bail, KFMB reporter Abbie Alford posted on Facebook.
Quinonez, from the Sacramento suburb of Antelope, claimed to Alford that she acted in self defense and wouldn't say anything more without her lawyer present.
Taro Arai, the owner of Sacramento restaurant Mikuni, said he saw the two shoving each other before Quinonez threw the punch.
'In the beginning, they were not arguing. They were just like 'do this, don't do that, don't do this, don't do that.' Then even the flight attendant said, 'Don't touch me,' Arai told KTXL.
He told Good Day Sacramento that the flight attendant was 'bleeding everywhere in the back.'
'This lady who hit her went back to her seat, wore a mask — nothing happened seems like. I'm like huh, woah, I mean, she was so strong she could knock me out,' he said.
Southwest spokesman Chris Mainz said Quinonez ignored the flight crew's reminders of wearing a seatbelt and putting her tray table away.
'The passenger repeatedly ignored standard inflight instructions and became verbally and physically abusive upon landing,' he said.
The incident marked an escalation in unruly behavior by airline passengers and led the president of the flight attendants' union to ask for more federal air marshals on planes in a letter.
'Unfortunately, this is just one of many occurrences,' said the union president, Lyn Montgomery.
She said there were 477 incidents of 'misconduct' by passengers on Southwest planes between April 8 and May 15.
The Federal Aviation Administration said Monday that airlines have reported 2,500 incidents of unruly passengers this year, including 1,900 cases in which passengers refused to wear face masks, which are required by federal rule.
The FAA provided those numbers as it announced it was seeking civil penalties totaling $54,500 against five passengers for behavior ranging from refusing to wear a mask to assaulting flight attendants.
'I've been in the industry since 1992, and this is the worst ever,' Montgomery said in an interview. 'People seem to be more angry. When they´re asked to do something, compliance seems to be more difficult.'
Southwest and most airlines train flight attendants to de-escalate tense situations with unhappy travelers. Montgomery said those tactics are growing less effective and a small number of passengers are becoming bolder in challenging the authority of crew members.
Montgomery, the president of Local 556 of the Transport Workers Union, wrote about the weekend attack in a letter to Southwest CEO Gary Kelly.
Montgomery asked Kelly to lobby federal officials for more air marshals on flights and to ban passengers who violate rules instead of putting them on another flight.
She said flight attendants are concerned about Southwest's plan to resume selling alcohol on board planes. Many recent cases that have caught FAA´s attention involving passengers who were drinking.
Southwest Airlines said Wednesday that bookings are improving and leisure-travel fares for June are approaching pre-pandemic levels, further signs that the airline industry is recovering from a deep slump.
The Dallas-based airline said the average April flight was 79% full, and it expects June flights to be 85% full. Southwest said it has sold 55% of the seats it expects to fill in June and 35% for July, which it called "fairly typical" booking patterns.
Southwest said in a regulatory filing that demand is still being driven mostly by leisure travelers. It said bookings by business travelers are ticking modestly higher but remain down about 80% from 2019 levels.