With the U.S. election now less than a week away, tensions around who people want to see as the new president continue to run high — in some cases, even when flying over 30,000 feet above the ground.
On Oct. 26, two women sitting, who were waiting to board a British Airways flight from London to Austin, Texas had to be escorted off by police for arguing over one of the "Make America Great Again" hats that one of them was wearing.
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"Police at Heathrow were made aware of an incident involving two women waiting to board a plane in Terminal 5,” the local police department said in a statement. “A woman in her forties and a woman in her sixties made counter allegations of affray (a British legal term for threatening violence). Enquiries are ongoing."
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A hat fight causes two women to get kicked off a flight
Flight BA191 was scheduled to leave London at 12:15 p.m., but was delayed briefly; the fight broke out as the women were waiting to board the plane at approximately 12:45 p.m.
The flight eventually took off at 2.11 p.m., after the pilot called for police assistance to lead them off the flight.
While police and British Airways described the incident vaguely as a "disturbance," passengers who were on the flight said that the MAGA hat one of them was wearing was the cause of the argument.
Both were premium economy travelers who were boarding the flight earlier than the main cabin.
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'Risk of a full-scale punch-up at 30,000 feet'
"With the U.S. presidential election so close, tensions are sky high, airline crew could not run the risk of a full-scale punch-up at 30,000 feet," one passenger on the flight said to London-based tabloid The Sun.
The extent of the fight and whether the two women were simply denied service on this particular flight or banned from flying with British Airways entirely remain unclear.
Similar incidents have already been observed on domestic flights in the U.S.
At the end of August, a man was reportedly removed from a Delta Air Lines (DAL) flight slated to take off from Sarasota Bradenton International Airport after refusing to change from a vulgar shirt depicting former president Donald Trump showing middle fingers and making a crude comment toward women.
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"He turned his shirt inside out, and we all boarded," a passenger claiming to be on the flight described on the social media platform Reddit alongside a video of a men being led toward the front of the plane by a Delta agent. "Next thing I know, right before takeoff, a Delta employee comes on the plane and escorts him off the flight, he had flipped his shirt back to the decal side."
In anticipation of similar confrontations breaking out on flights, JetBlue Airways (JBLU) changed its policy to no longer allow flight attendants to wear pins with any sort of political messaging back in the spring.
While the incident that prompted the change arose from an argument over a flight attendant's "Free Palestine" pin, the airline was already looking to rework its tendency in anticipation of political tensions running high around the election.
"The aircraft is not the right place for crew members to advocate positions on certain issues or political topics," JetBlue spokesperson Derek Dombrowski said at the time.
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