A man forced a flight from Sydney to San Francisco to be diverted to Auckland on New Year's Day after he allegedly abused United Airlines crew and passengers.
The 42-year-old American is now in police custody while arrangements are made for him to board a flight back to the United States, Immigration New Zealand border manager Senta Jehle says.
Video footage shows him standing in the cabin aisle arguing about seating with a crew member, who asks him to calm down and not yell.
"I'm not yelling, you want to hear me f**king yell?" he replies.
The crew member then warns the man he could be kicked off the flight.
"Do you know how cool it would be to have the airplane turned around for me? You're going to do that?" he retorts.
"You do that. I'm getting so impolite aren't I? Fat ass," he can be heard saying in the video.
The plane was near Tonga at the time of the disruption, and turned back to Auckland.
Anjou Ahlborn Kay, a passenger whose husband took the video, shared it in a Facebook post saying: "A bigoted passenger screamed racist, homophobic, misogynistic, disturbing words to passengers and crew, then called the flight attendants every offensive thing in the book.
"Kudos to the flight attendants who remained calm but really sucks this one idiot has grounded us."
The man was arrested on arrival at Auckland International Airport and was refused entry to New Zealand.
United Airlines told Fairfax the rest of the flight's passengers were put up in a hotel overnight, before the flight continued to San Francisco from Auckland on Monday afternoon.
From July 1 2015 to June 30 2016, 1,371 people were refused entry when they arrived at the New Zealand border, compared with 1,345 people in the previous financial year, Immigration says.
Newshub.
