Two men have been held by the Hanoi police for threatening and attempting to attack a woman attendant on board a VietJet flight.
The passengers, whose names have been withheld, were on a flight from Ho Chi Minh City to Vinh in the central province of Nghe An Wednesday when the flight attendant announced the plane had to make an emergency landing in Hanoi due to bad weather in Vinh.
Several passengers were angry, and two began abusing the flight attendant. They tried to hit her in the face. Local media reports said the woman, from Thailand, was the flight’s chief attendant.
After touching down at Noi Bai International Airport, the captain refused to carry the two and handed over them to airport security.
As they continued to scream and bang their hands on the plane, security officers gave them to the police. Officers said they would likely face flight bans.
The flight then took off for Vinh, around 300 kilometers (186 miles) south of Hanoi.
Low-cost carriers and the country’s increasing affluence have sparked rapid growth in the aviation industry, which served more than 53 million passengers in the first half of this year, up 14 percent from a year earlier.
But there have been a series of violent clashes between passengers and flight crews in recent years.
Last month, three Vietnamese men received a one-year flight ban for assaulting a VietJet flight attendant in Thanh Hoa Province as she refused to take photos with them. The men are also being investigated for disturbing public order.
Last year a man was fined VND7.5 million ($330) for hitting a woman employee of Vietjet Air in the face with his bag after she refused to give him a boarding pass and said she had to move his flight to the next day.
Vietnam imposes flight bans of up to a year on travelers who disrupt order on flights or in airports, make bomb threats or use fake documents to travel. Repeat offenders get an indefinite ban.
