Frontier Airlines flight crew personnel discovered that a passenger possessed box cutters and, concerned, approached Cumberbatch, asking him to help monitor the passenger as they determined their next steps, he recalled Monday.
“They said, ‘Would you mind switching seats,’ and I volunteered,” he said.
Cumberbatch, a U.S. Navy veteran, said he stands nearly 6 feet-3 inches, which he surmised was why crew members approached him.
“They saw that I was a bigger guy, and they asked us to come up,” Cumberbatch told the Dayton Daily News, referring to himself and his partner who was flying with him. “They at first said, ‘What’s your background? Do you have any military or police background? Are you ex-military?’”
A spokesman for the Atlanta airport told the New York Times that the passenger, who had not been identified publicly early Monday, had been threatening to stab passengers and crew members on the airplane.
The flight was diverted to Atlanta from its Tampa destination after what the Transportation Security Administration acknowledged Sunday were mistakes in baggage screening procedures that allowed the box cutters to be brought aboard the plane.
Cumberbatch said he traded seats with a woman who had been sitting next to the passenger with box cutters.
Cumberbatch said he approached the “young man” who had his legs draped over the adjacent seat after the woman vacated it. Cumberbatch said he told him, “Very firmly, this is my seat. I’m going to be sitting here.”
“He said, ‘No, you’re not. A young lady is sitting here,’” the Kettering man recounted.
“And I said, ‘Not anymore,” Cumberbatch said. “He got bothered by that and got up and walked to the back (of the airplane).”
Cumberbatch said he stood during much of the diverted flight, “just to make sure he knew I was still around.”
The passenger became agitated on landing in Atlanta, where police officers were forced to grapple with him during passenger deplaning, Cumberbatch said. “There was some kind of mental situation going on,” he said.
No injuries were reported, and the plane landed at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, where police arrested the passenger.
Cumberbatch is launch manager for Launch-ML.com, which describes itself as a platform for aspiring entrepreneurs seeking guidance and mentoring. He said he’s also a writer and a musician.
At no point did he have to come to physical grips with the passenger. While relieved that no one was hurt, Cumberbatch said with a laugh, “I don’t want to fly again, for a while.”
“No one got hurt,” he added. “A lot of people were traumatized. I think there was a lot of emotional trauma that people were going through.”
“I’m still trying to process this,” he said.
He said members of the flight crew thanked him for his help. “That’s about it. I kind of stepped out of there really quickly.” (He said in a text later Monday that Frontier Airlines had not contacted him.)
A spokesman for the Hartfield-Jackson Airport declined to comment Monday. A message was left for Frontier Airlines representatives.
A new flight was scheduled for Saturday morning to take passengers from Atlanta to Tampa, a Frontier spokeswoman told NBC News.
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