No official word on origin of man with mental health crisis on Southwest flight | Fact check
The claim: A man who jumped from a plane’s emergency exit was Israeli-American, threw something on plane
A Nov. 28 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) includes a video of a hectic scene onboard a plane and a man being held down on the tarmac.
“On a flight from New Orleans to Atlanta, an Israeli American jumped out the exit door right before the plane took off & allegedly threw something on the plane,” reads the post.
It received more than 20,000 likes in one day. Other versions of the claim spread widely on X, formerly known as Twitter.
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The video shows a Nov. 26 incident in which a man jumped out the emergency exit of a Southwest Airlines flight before takeoff, but the description is off on multiple counts. No official source has said the man was Israeli-American, there is no evidence he left anything on the plane and the description omits that the incident was a mental health crisis.
Officials not releasing man's identity, no evidence he left anything on the plane
The video matches one included in reports from outlets including USA TODAY and CNN about a passenger who jumped from a Southwest flight on Nov. 26.
The Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office, whose jurisdiction covers the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, said in a Nov. 27 statement that the man used an emergency exit door to leave the plane before it departed from the gate.
The man climbed onto the plane’s wing and jumped to the ground, where he was held by members of the grounds crew until sheriff’s deputies arrived, the office said.
Fact check: Police provided security, did not evacuate Jewish students at UC San Diego
The man was “incoherent and not fully aware of his surroundings,” the statement said. Officials believed he was experiencing a mental health crisis, and he was taken to a hospital for evaluation.
The sheriff’s office said it would not be releasing the man’s identity because he was not arrested, though it added the investigation was referred to federal authorities.
“There is no indication that the man left anything on the plane, nor was he found in possession of any weapons of any type,” the statement said.
It described the man as a 38-year-old Atlanta resident but did not include any references to his ethnicity. Neither national nor local news reports reported the man was Israeli-American.
Southwest Airlines referred USA TODAY to the sheriff’s office’s statement. The sheriff’s office did not respond to follow-up questions from USA TODAY.
An X user who shared the claim referred USA TODAY to a TikTok post from a person claiming to be a passenger on the plane who identified the man as an "Isreal American (sic)" in the video's caption. Neither the TikTok user nor the airport responded to USA TODAY's request for comment.
Our fact-check sources:
USA TODAY, Nov. 28, Passenger jumps out of plane’s emergency exit at gate
CNN, Nov. 27, A Southwest Airlines passenger opened an emergency exit and climbed onto a plane’s wing while the aircraft was at the gate
Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office, Nov. 27, Facebook post
WGNO-TV, Nov. 27, Passenger jumps out emergency exit onto wing of plane at MSY, sheriff’s office says
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Southwest Flight emergency exit incident misrepresented | Fact check
