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Jan 16th

'30 Rock' star Alec Baldwin apologizes for tantrum on American Airlines flight

Maybe the flight attendant should have said: “Do you want me to spell it out for you?”

Famously hot-tempered “30 Rock” star Alec Baldwin was removed from his American Airlines flight to New York City on Dec. 6 for refusing to shut down his electronic devices when asked to do so because he was playing a Scrabble-like game on his phone.

Shortly after 6 p.m. today, the New York Post reported that Baldwin wrote an apology via a column for the Huffington Post.

"I would like to apologize to the other passengers onboard the American Airlines flight that I was thrown off of yesterday," wrote Baldwin. "It was never my intention to inconvenience anyone with my 'issue' with a certain flight attendant."

The New York Post initially reported that American Airlines Flight 4 was delayed an hour by the disruption.

A passenger sitting across from Baldwin told the Post that the actor was also on the phone while he played the game Words With Friends and ignored the flight attendant’s repeated requests to turn it off.

Steve Weiss said that the flight attendant “was very nice. The door was closed they just announced that they were pulling away from the gate. [Baldwin] got up threw his papers on the floor stormed into the bathroom slammed the door closed, beat on the wall and then came back."

Weis added that Baldwin said, “If you want to kick me off, kick me off,” adding that the actor “was just crazy, he just flipped out, the guy has problems."

Another passenger, Michael J. Wolf, was the first to post on Twitter that Baldwin had been removed. Wolf tweeted at 4:20 p.m. EST, “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."

In an e-mail to CNN, Baldwin spokesman Matthew Hiltzik said that the star loves the game Words With Friends so much “that he was willing to leave a plane for it, but he has already boarded another AA flight."

Baldwin tweeted several times about the incident:

He wrote: “Flight attendant on American [Airlines] reamed me out 4 playing WORDS W FRIENDS while we sat at the gate, not moving."

He later added that he would never again fly on American Airlines, “where retired Catholic school gym teachers from the 1950's find jobs as flight attendants.”

Then, "Now on the 3 o'clock American flight. The flight attendants already look.....smarter."

The airline refused to comment about “something that might or might not have happened.” However, on its Twitter account, the airline tweeted: "Mr. Baldwin, we are looking into this. Please DM us contact information.”

A crew member, however, told the Post that Baldwin was treated like any other passenger and the crew had no choice but to have him removed.

“He was violent, abusive and aggressive,” the crew member said. “He got into the bathroom and started beating on the wall and he pounded his fists on the galley counter. Yelling, screaming, very ugly. It was unsafe to keep him on board that's why he got kicked out.

“He was asked five times," she continued. "I contacted the captain. We were brought back in and he was let off the plane … Everyone has to follow the rules, it doesn't matter who you are.”

—JOE GREENE, NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

 

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