Topless smoking, ranting passenger storms cockpit and bites crew member

Another bizarre air rage incident is making headlines, highlighting that the ongoing scourge of strange and outlandish in-flight behavior by unruly passengers isn’t unique to U.S. flyers or airlines. This week’s airborne drama played out on an Aeroflot flight from Stavropol to Moscow Tuesday. Aeroflot is Russia’s flag carrier and largest airline.

At around 33,000 feet, a female passenger reportedly stripped bare from the waist up, lit up a cigarette, told everyone they were going to die, and then bit a flight attendant while shouting at crew members and attempting to break into the cockpit.

The woman, 49-year-old Anzhelika Moskvitina, allegedly got up from her seat while the plane was going through some turbulence and locked herself in the lavatory, where she proceeded to light a cigarette and strip herself topless.

Witnesses said that she emerged from the bathroom half-naked, and began shouting at fellow passengers that they were all doomed and about to die.

She then attempted to force her way into the cockpit while arguing with flight attendants, even biting one of them in the process, as they tried to pacify her and get her to cover her bare chest.

Thanks to a video that emerged online, we’re privy to some of what passed between Moskvitina, who was suspected of intoxication, and crew members as they sought to restrain her.

“Lady, take a seat and get dressed,” a crew member told her, afterward inquiring, “Where are your clothes?”

After refusing to comply, she is asked, “Do you understand you’re violating the behavior rules on the plane? There are children here. Respect them at least.”

“I respect children. What’s more, I love children,” she replied. “I understand I’ll go to the mental hospital or a prison. But I want to go to the cockpit.” The cabin crew told her that her demand was “senseless”.

Crew members repeatedly advised her to “calm down”, but she continually countered by demanding “leave me alone” and “let me go”. As they tried to wrestle her clothes on, she declared dramatically, ‘Please go away from me. Kill me here, but I will smoke.”

Ultimately, it took some assistance from business-class passengers to restrain her as crew members forced her back into her bra and then, on the captain’s orders, fetter her in plastic handcuffs.

A doctor on board monitored the manacled woman until the aircraft finally landed at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport, where she was detained by police. The male flight attendant whom she bit required immediate medical treatment.

Aeroflot responded immediately by demanding the creation of new laws to cover such disruptive and dangerous air rage incidents, including a no-fly list for known unruly passengers.

According to The Daily Mail, the airline commented that Moskvitina had been in “an inadequate state” to fly and “grossly violated the rules of conduct on board the aircraft”.

It also said the presumably intoxicated woman, “ignored repeated warnings from the crew and tried to break into the cockpit,” and that, “Due to the passenger’s destructive behavior, the aircraft commander decided to use a means of restraint on her.”

“Aeroflot emphasizes that this case again proves the urgent need at the legislative level to toughen punishment for air rowdies, including creating a single blacklist of destructive passengers for all airlines,” its statement continued.

Moskvitina has reportedly been cautioned that she’s s liable to face criminal charges over the incident.