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CAUGHT IN A BRAWL! Spirit Airlines agents seen fistfighting with mom-daughter duo over extra luggage fees in wild video

On January 30, the Philadelphia airport witnessed an unruly scene when a mother-daughter duo reportedly decided to exchange blows with the Spirit Airlines staff

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA: When the journey is long, there is no faster way to get to your destination than by boarding a flight. While it is both comfortable and fast, flights do come at an expense, and extra charges for one's luggage exceeding the limit can often be a bummer. However, generally, passengers carrying an extra load do not mind coughing out the extra penny for it. Every now and then, during the process, passengers and airways staff may exchange some heated words, but it almost never escalates into a full-fledged fight. 

On January 30, however, the Philadelphia airport witnessed an unruly scene when a mother-daughter duo reportedly decided to exchange blows with airline staff after they were hit with extra fees because of their carry-on luggage that was too large. Footage obtained by Daily Mail shows a 39-year-old woman and her 17-year-old daughter getting into a full-fledged fight with the staff of Spirit Airlines. 

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What led to the fight?

The footage begins with two female travelers grabbing and clawing at gate agents at the Philadelphia International Airport on Monday night, as per the Daily Mail exclusive. In a matter of minutes, the younger woman is seen grabbing the dreadlocks of a Spirit Airlines staff when another airport staff slaps the passenger on her head, shouting "get off, get off." The girl then disengages and is restrained, but the staff lands a few punches on her face. 

The fight reportedly erupted over Spirit Airlines charging extra fees from the two passengers because their carry-on luggage was too large, as reported by the Daily Mail. While the exact reason for who started the fight remains unknown, the response of the Spirit Airlines staff to the whole situation did not go down well with passengers. In the video, the 34-year-old mother of the teenager is seen fighting in just her bra, after losing her shirt and shoes in the scrap. She is dragged away and punched in the head by a Spirit staff as she grabbed a keyboard on the counter. 

"I don't know exactly who started it, but there was a lot of yelling and I turned around to see two Spirit employees fighting a mother and daughter. Someone was bleeding. At one stage a child got involved. Regardless of what he did, he's just a kid - he looked distraught. If this is the way Spirit Airlines operates, it's really scary." Another passenger said, "I was shocked at how violent it was and how long it went on for," one of the witnesses said, as quoted by Daily Mail.

Not a first for Spirit Airlines

The ugly situation that was witnessed at the Philadelphia airport on Monday was not the first such confrontation that the airline has seen in recent years. In 2020, a massive fight was witnessed on a Newark-San Juan flight with passengers trading racist and homophobic insults and a woman being tasered for refusing to wear a mask. In November 2021 two flight attendants had to restrain a drunk passenger after she tried to get off the plane mid-flight with her luggage. 

Before this, the latest such incident involving Spirit Airlines staff was in August, last year, when a male agent was caught on video punching and tackling a woman who had hurled racial slurs at him. The incident made headlines and resulted in the suspension of the airline employee.