The Auburn basketball team’s flight to Houston for a showdown between the No. 11 Tigers and No. 4 Cougars barely made it the 55 miles to Montgomery, Alabama when it abruptly started heading back to campus on Friday night.
Reportedly, a scuffle had broken out among unnamed players in the cabin and head coach Bruce Pearl did not hesitate to turn this plane around.
The flight map is pretty wild. The audio between the air traffic controllers and the cockpit of Auburn’s plane is even more bizarre. You can hear the pilot struggle to describe exactly what happened as he tells the tower the flight deck is secure amid a “passenger disturbance.”
CBS Sports reports the incident involved freshman forward Jahki Howard and senior forward Ja’Heim Hudson.
You can’t make this stuff up. The pilot audio is both bizarre and hilarious on the now infamous team flight from Auburn to Houston. pic.twitter.com/qacIQ8KZPI
— Michael Southern (@msouthern17) November 9, 2024
MORE: ATC audio includes pilot saying “flight deck is secure the threat level is contained. We just had—we’ll have police on the ground, we had 2 players that got into a physical altercation, clothes were ripped.” And appears to say one of the players was bloody https://t.co/orsMUytM5w
— Jonathan Hardison (@WBRC6Hardison) November 9, 2024
Both Howard and Hudson were reportedly barred from getting on Auburn’s second flight to Houston on Friday night and will not rejoin the team for Saturday evening’s game, according to CBS Sports. The two bench players each saw at least 15 minutes of action in Auburn’s season-opening victory against Vermont.
We’ll learn more about what exactly occurred when Pearl and Auburn meet with the media after facing the Cougars.
