Passengers on a flight from Los Angeles to Boston were sent into a panic Sunday when a man went on a violent tirade, attempting to open an emergency door and stab a flight attendant with a broken metal spoon.
"I will kill every man on this plane!" the unruly passenger shouted in a video.
"So where are they? Where's Homeland Security?," he continued. "Pull the gun. Pull the gun… Tell them to bring SWAT to shoot me down because they're going to have to shoot me down today."
The incident has raised concerns over airline security and if an air marshal was on board the cross-country flight.
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"For security reasons, TSA will not confirm the deployment of Federal Air Marshals on flights," the agency said in a statement.
Sonya Hightower-LaBosco, executive director of the Air Marshal National Council, told "Fox & Friends First" Thursday that the TSA is not confirming the lack of an air marshal on the plane because they knew it was a security failure on their part.
"Your eyes don't lie. Did you see an air marshal on that plane?" she asked. "They know that they should've had air marshals on that aircraft. They had hundreds of air marshals standing around in the airport… in the Los Angeles airport and Boston."
Co-host Ashley Strohmier asked Hightower-LaBosco about the role a "high-risk" label plays in determining whether flights have air marshals on board.
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Hightower-LaBosco argued the terrorized flight to Boston should have been categorized as such, adding that typically flights traveling from one coast to another fall into this category.
"This flight was definitely a high-risk flight. You've got to look at the capacity of the field. It was an East Coast to West Coast. It was a large aircraft, and that was a flight that would be a regular route that we would have air marshals covering, so this definitely would be a priority one flight, and it should have been covered."
Hightower-LaBosco said approximately 90% of air marshals are positioned in airports while the remainder are put on planes.
"Which is completely backward" she said, calling the Boston flight incident a "wake-up call."
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The Air Marshal National Council plans to work with Congress to make adjustments to ensure safer flights, Hightower-LaBosco said. One of her goals is to see air marshals removed from operating under the TSA and reassigned to a law enforcement group instead.
"How many wake-up calls are we going to have in our planes before we're talking about the lives that it's cost?"
United Airlines said no one was injured in the incident.
"Thanks to the quick action of our crew and customers, one customer was restrained after becoming a security concern on United flight 2609 from Los Angeles to Boston," the company statement said. "The flight landed safely and was met by law enforcement."
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FAA Acting Administrator Billy Nolen was questioned about the incident Wednesday during a Senate hearing on reform efforts, assuring lawmakers the agency has a "zero tolerance policy around unruly passengers."
"I can assure you that we will take every step, every tool that we have at our disposal to ensure that action takes place against any perpetrator," Nolen said. "It is just simply not allowed."
