American Airlines issued a statement on the incident in which it said that the flight landed safely and that the perpetrator was led out of the aircraft by local law enforcement in Albuquerque.
In recent months, there have been multiple incidents of unruly passenger behaviour onboard aircraft, and the latest incident happened onboard flight AI882 en route from Goa to Delhi.
An Air India flight to London returned to Delhi after an unruly passenger allegedly harmed two cabin crew members, the airline has said. The flier has been deboarded and a police case registered.
The accused, Klas Erik Harald Jonas Westberg, was handed over to Mumbai police by the airline staff when the flight landed at Mumbai Airport on Thursday.