United Airlines flight 808 scheduled to fly to Washington Dulles on Friday, was forced to divert back to Beijing, China nearly 4 hours later due to a drunk Economy passenger onboard! The drunk passenger was seated in seat 18J onboard the Boeing 787, which was carrying 212 passengers.

Per the South China Morning Post,

A United Airlines flight bound for Washington was forced to return to its departure airport in Beijing after a passenger became involved in an altercation with a member of the cabin crew.

News reports suggested that the passenger in question had been involved in a dispute with someone sitting in a neighbouring seat and then turned on a flight attendant who tried to calm the situation.

According to The Beijing News, the incident began when two passengers became involved in an argument. One of them was described as a foreign passenger whose body movements suggested they had been drinking alcohol.

As this is United after all, I have my doubts about how many drinks this passenger was actually served in the two hours before they decided to divert, which leads me to believe the passenger was already drinking before the flight, and gate agents failed to recognize this and let him on the plane anyways.

The incident escalated when a flight attendant tried to intervene and the passenger refused to calm down. The crew then issued an alert and contacted police in Beijing, the report said, citing police.

Passengers on the flight were all deplaned once Beijing and rebooked on flights the next day, as the crew would have been illegal to head back to Washington-Dulles.