Delta Air Passenger Tried Entering Cockpit Mid-Air, Claiming 'I Am God!'

After a disruptive Delta Air passenger tried to access the cockpit mid-air Wednesday, a flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to New York was forced to turn back to the airport.

The incident took place shortly after flight DL579 departed for its destination at 7 a.m. EDT with 160 passengers on board. Carlos Ramírez Rodríguez, 30, suddenly attempted to barge into the cockpit, claiming that he was the Almighty. “I am God! Tomorrow San Juan is going to disappear, I came to save the world, and I’m going to end terrorism,” the suspect reportedly said.

Moraima Garcia Rohena, a psychologist who was going on vacation, told New York Post that the man got up from his seat and walked to the front of the plane even as the flight was gaining altitude and the seat belt sign was on.

“When he got to the middle of the plane the flight attendants tried to stop him. They said, ‘Stop! Stop! You cannot be walking,’” Rohena said. “He didn’t stop, he continued. The flight attendants — three of them — stood up and told him he cannot be there. They told him, ‘You need to back off!’”

“He started saying that he was God and he was preventing a catastrophe on the plane,” she added. “Then he tried to open the cockpit door. He banged on it but he couldn’t get it open. The passengers restrained him. One of the flight attendants went to the back to get something to restrain him. The passengers held him down.”

Aereida Diaz, 31, another passenger who was traveling to the Big Apple to visit her father, likened the situation to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. “I thought it was a terrorist attack. I always think the worst when something like this happened in a plane after 9/11,” Diaz said.

A third person present on the flight at the time, Jacob Colon, 24, who was returning from Puerto Rico after celebrating his girlfriend’s birthday, said he experienced a “panic attack” during the incident.

“I was about to beat up the guy myself. He delayed our flight. He gets on the plane. He starts talking about Jesus this, the world was going to end and the plane was going to crash — just another fool,” he said. “This is only my second time on a plane… I’ve never been on a plane like that and to hear that, my first reaction was to get angry. My second reaction was to worry. I got to go back home to my mother and my siblings.”

He lauded the quick and efficient action taken by the crew members of the flight to bring the situation under control, including the decision of the pilots to turn the flight around. After landing in San Juan, Rodríguez was arrested by the police and removed from the flight. The plane took off for the John F. Kennedy International Airport again and reached its destination without any further events at 1:10 p.m. EDT – more than two hours behind schedule.

“Delta applauds the quick action and professionalism of the crew of Delta flight 579… The flight attendant crew swiftly restrained the individual with help from some customers, and law enforcement in San Juan took him into custody for further evaluation. The flight continued to New York after a brief delay,” an airline spokesperson told Simple Flying in a statement.