According to a story posted by CNN earlier today, 30 Rock star Alec Baldwin was ordered off an American Airlines flight destined for New York City. Taking off from Los Angeles, Baldwin was spending his time playing Zynga’s Words With Friends while sitting at the gate. According to Baldwin’s official Twitter account, he stated “Flight attendant on American reamed me out 4 playing WORDS W FRIENDS while we sat at the gate, not moving.” Former President and COO of MTV Networks Michael J. Wolf was also on the same American Airlines flight and posted “On an AA flight at LAX. Alec Baldwin removed from the plane We had to go back to the gate. Terrible that everyone had to wait” on his Twitter account.
Since Words With Friends requires a Wi-Fi or 3G connection to compete against other players, the mobile device couldn’t have been in Airplane mode to play the game. After Baldwin was removed from the flight, he was booked on a later flight with American, but continued to hurl insults at American Airlines while heaping praise on United. One of his tweets equated American Airlines flight attendants to “retired Catholic school gym teachers from the 1950’s.” The official American Airlines Twitter account attempted to reach out to Baldwin to discuss the incident, but an official statement from American Airlines stated that they wouldn’t discuss the incident due to customer privacy. According to ABC News, other Twitter accounts from the flight indicated that Baldwin was verbally abusive with the flight attendants.
American Airlines recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last week and is currently undergoing restructuring in regards to senior management. While no investigation have been opened into the incident as of yet, American Airlines could file a complaint with the Federal Aviation Administration and Baldwin would face a monetary fine.
