In her 32 years flying, an American Airlines flight attendant says it was by far the scariest experience she's been through.
The woman is one of the flight attendants who was on board American Airlines Flight 1755 bound for San Francisco out of Miami Wednesday night, when two men allegedly attacked the pilot after they were kicked off the flight.
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"If we would have let it escalate - if he would have gotten violent during the flight - passengers could have been injured, other crew members could have been injured," said the woman, who asked that we not identify her by name.
Brothers Luis and Jonathan Baez of Las Piedras, Puerto Rico, were in court in Miami earlier this week to answer charges of Aggravated Battery and Simple Battery. Bond was set at $9,000 each.
According to the flight attendant, things got out of hand shortly after she noticed that Jonathan, 27, was sleeping with his shoes off, feet propped up on the seat in front of him, tray table down and seat belt unbuckled.
When she tried to wake him as the plane departed the gate, she said Baez wouldn't budge.
"That's when I called the captain," she said. "I told him I had a passenger - and I didn't know what was wrong with him, if he was on drugs or drunk, I wasn't sure, but he wasn't responding."
The pilot turned the plane around and returned to the gate.
"As we always do with these things, we'd much rather deal with it on the ground than in the air," American Airlines spokesman Tim Smith told Local 10's John Turchin.
The flight attendant said the pilot and another the flight attendant then woke Baez and escorted him to get off the plane, telling him he was not complying with procedure.
On the way off, Jonathan's brother, Luis, got up and followed.
According to police, when the Baez brothers got to the jet bridge they turned and went after the captain, punched the pilot in the face and hit a flight attendant in the shoulder when she tried to intervene.
Because the men speak very little English, some passengers questioned whether things escalated due to a language barrier. The flight attendant insists that was not the case.
"There was an agent who spoke fluent Spanish and she was right there with the captain and she told them and they understood. And, I guess they decided to take things into their own hands," she said.
They Baez brothers remain in the Miami-Dade County jail where they are awaiting federal charges.