An American Airlines flight bound for Chicago returned to the airport from where it took off from the US state of New Mexico after one of the passengers tried to open the door during the flight, the American press quoted by News.ro reported.

The video, which has been circulating on social media and the media since Tuesday, shows other passengers preventing the man from opening the door to one of the exits.

The plane, which took off from the southwestern city of Albuquerque, reached an altitude of nearly 8,000 meters before turning back, according to flight tracking data.

“American Airlines Flight 1219 returned safely to Sunport International Airport in Albuquerque, New Mexico on Tuesday, February 20, at approximately 14:40 local time (21:40 GMT) after the crew reported disruption to passengers.” – said the US Civil Aviation Regulatory Agency (FAA) on its website.

“The FAA is conducting an investigation,” the FAA added, without providing further details about the incident.

In an interview with ABC, one of the passengers, Blaze Ward, said that the man “had already lowered the safety mechanism and had both hands on the lever. “There was a difference in pressure, like a hiss,” he said.

“I need to get off this plane,” the man who tried to open the door allegedly said, according to witnesses.

Although the U.S. hasn’t had a fatal plane crash in more than a decade, industry vigilance has been heightened since last month’s incident in which the doors of an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 were ripped off mid-air.

The number of unruly passengers has also increased in recent years, reaching a record of nearly 6,000 incidents in 2021, according to FAA data. In 2022 and 2023, those numbers dropped to around 2,000 incidents.