A 23-year-old man is facing serious federal charges after allegedly trying to open a plane’s emergency exit door mid-flight, while also attempting to strip off his clothes and getting into a violent fight with a flight attendant.
The SkyWest flight, originally heading to Detroit, was forced to divert to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Thursday evening due to the dangerous altercation. Passengers on SkyWest Flight 3612 were left terrified, with one shouting a now-famous 6-word yell, after the man also allegedly tried to breach the pilot’s cockpit. Authorities arrested him after the plane landed safely.
The Cedar Rapids Police Department identified the passenger as Mario Nikprelaj from Nebraska. He initially faced multiple state charges following his first court appearance in Linn County on Friday. However, local prosecutors later dropped those charges upon learning Nikprelaj would face more severe federal charges. A judge approved the motion, and the federal complaint now seeks to charge him with interference with flight crew members and attendants.
According to the official complaint, a flight attendant had already notified the captain about an “unruly passenger” before the aircraft even departed from Omaha, Nebraska. The flight crew believed they had controlled the situation, and the plane proceeded with its departure.
However, just 20 miles outside of Cedar Rapids, the flight attendant made an emergency call to the captain, advising that “Nikprelaj was attempting to open the aircraft’s emergency exit door.” This prompted the captain to declare an emergency and notify air traffic control about the diversion.
Five minutes later, the situation escalated. A second flight attendant informed the captain that the suspect was still trying to open the door and was now “fighting” with the first flight attendant. The pilot could be heard on the radio telling air traffic control that the passenger was “in a fight with a flight attendant right now, trying to open the emergency exit.”
The flight attendant involved in the altercation told federal authorities that while trying to stop him, Nikprelaj “pushed and threatened to kill” the crew member. Following a call for help from the captain, three passengers assisted the crew to subdue Nikprelaj. The flight landed safely approximately 15 minutes later.
“Definitely not anything I’d experienced before on a flight,” recalled Jonathan Spencer Van Der Waarden, a passenger on board. He described hearing the flight attendant call button go off repeatedly. “You just hear like 6-7 ding sounds going off in a row, and a gentleman in the back started yelling to the flight attendant, ‘he’s trying to open the door!’”
Van Der Waarden added that after Nikprelaj was initially contained, he removed his shirt and shoes and then attempted to approach the cockpit. “A couple of us passengers intervened, blocked the aisle way,” he said. “He got aggressive with us, pushing, shouting. Don’t know what he was going to do, but certainly wasn’t going to let him get any closer than he was.”
Law enforcement met the plane upon landing, arrested Nikprelaj, and transported him to the Linn County Correctional Center. He was also charged with unlawfully possessing more than 40 pills of Xanax. Nikprelaj remains in custody in an Iowa jail on a $10,000 cash surety bond.
In a statement, the FBI affirmed its position: “The FBI takes threats to aviation seriously and we work with our partners to address crimes occurring on commercial aircraft that endanger the safety of passengers, flight crews, and flight attendants.”
