Southwest Passenger: I Was Detained For 10 Hours Over Nail Polish Squabble

Painting your nails on a plane can cause problems. There are the obvious ones like annoying nearby passengers with the fumes, or the potential for spilling nail polish everywhere if you run into some turbulence. And if you get into an argument with the flight attendant, there’s apparently the chance you’ll be detained for 10 hours when you land.

A Southwest Airlines passenger says she was trying to paint her nails while en route from California to Houston last Sunday. A flight attendant asked her to stop. She says she obliged and apologized.

A little while later, the passenger says she had the idea to finish up her last two nails in the plane bathroom, so as to not bother anyone.

But when she came out, a second flight attendant was standing outside the lavatory and the two got into a scholarly debate on in-flight etiquette.

“She was screaming at me and wouldn’t stop,” the woman tells KTRK-TV. “She was getting so loud, while I was sitting in my seat, and I was just like, ‘Will you stop!’ And I was loud when I said, ‘Stop bitching at me,’ because she wouldn’t end the conversation.”

So when the plane landed in Houston, a pair of police officers were waiting. They interviewed the passenger and the attendant and asked the D.A. about pressing charges of “abusive profane language.”

The passenger says she was detained for 10 hours before a judge finally got around to her and dismissed the profane language charge.

Woman detained on Southwest flight after argument with flight attendant [KTRK]

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