Why did the 18-second video go so viral? Partly because someone on Twitter – not the person who actually recorded the video – added a caption that suggested the man had been placed on the air exclusion list for being part of the US Capitol insurrection.
“The people who invaded Capitol Wednesday are now discovering that they are on the air exclusion list pending the full investigation. They are not happy about that,” said the tweeter, who goes by the nickname @RayRedacted,
said in the caption.
Facts first: The caption on Twitter was inaccurate: The incident at the airport was not about the Capitol uprising. Instead, the man in the video was asked to leave a Charlotte-Denver flight for refusing to comply with American Airlines’ mandatory mask policy, airline spokesman Curtis Blessing told CNN.
“On Friday, January 8, a customer was asked to land Flight 1754 at Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT) for refusing to comply with our mandatory facial coverage policy. The customer responded to the disembarkation requests and the flight left at 7:42 pm EST to Denver International Airport (DEN), “Blessing said by email.
After the mask incident, Blessing said, the man was placed on American Airlines’ own refusal list, essentially a specific airline exclusion list for that airline, pending further investigation. But there is no basis for the suggestion that he has already been on a government air exclusion list – in which case it would be highly unlikely that he could board a plane – or banned from flying for any reason connected to the Capitol insurrection.
The video was originally posted on the social media app TikTok by Tania Domínguez, who told CNN that she was at Charlotte airport waiting for a different flight. His own caption read: “The Homeboy had a complete breakdown of the child’s level because they said to wear a mask.” (Later, she said in the TikTok comment thread attached to the video that she wasn’t sure the incident was about masks. But her initial instinct proved to be correct.)
The video shows the man walking in the terminal with his face covering his chin, instead of covering his nose and mouth. He sounds emotional as he yells about being kicked out of a plane and allegedly victimized by unidentified people he claimed to want to ruin his life.
CNN was unable to contact the man, whose name has not been released.
After CNN reported on Twitter on Tuesday that the @RayRedacted tweet incorrectly suggested that the incident was about the Capitol insurrection, @RayRedacted tweeted a
correction and said, “I initially received incorrect information.” As of 3:50 pm on Tuesday, the correction tweet had 20 retweets – against more than 107,000 retweets in the inaccurate initial tweet, which remained online.
Not the only one
This Charlotte video was not the only airport video to go viral with a fake caption after the Capitol insurrection. Videos of a prison incident at Florida’s Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, for example, were widely shared with record labels, claiming they were also related to the insurrection and a “#NoFlyList” – but, as the Tampa Bay Times pointed out, the videos were shot two months ago.
Congressional Democrats, including Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, have called for Capitol insurrection participants to be placed on the government’s no-fly list. But it is not clear what action is being taken, if any. The office of Homeland Security Chamber president Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat who last week asked the FBI and the Transportation Security Administration to add all Capitol protesters to the federal air exclusion list, said on Monday that has not received any updates on agencies have done so.
TSA said in a statement on Monday that it is on “high alert” after the Capitol incident and “travelers will notice additional police and the presence of dogs at the three airports in the Washington, DC area”.
CNN’s Pete Muntean contributed to this article.
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