*A video purportedly showing a flight attendant named Alfredo Rivera hilariously talking about duct taping a disruptive passenger to their seat is actually a comedian, according to the real flight attendant seen in a viral video wrapping the tape around the unruly passenger.
The comic pretends to be flight attendant Alfredo Rivera describing the altercation with the passenger to a local news outlet, following reports of a man being arrested on a Frontier Airlines flight. Footage of the incident, which also appears in the purported interview video, shows a passenger throwing punches at flight attendants before he is restrained and taped to a chair.
Folks on social media are sharing what they believe to be a real interview with Rivera. But nope. It’s a recreation all for laughs from a group called The Real Spark, which has done several other similar parody news interviews.
Watch below:
Another passenger, the real Alfredo Rivera, filmed the incident. An image of the incident shared by Reuters credited him. He was interviewed by Local 10, telling the outlet: “[Berry] started to get aggressive and basically attack the male flight attendants.” Following this, the above supposed interview with Rivera went viral. However, it was not the Rivera in the Local 10 news report.
On August 2, Local 10 reported that the passenger becoming violent on a flight and that he was subsequently duct-taped to a chair.It reported that a 22-year-old man named Maxwell Berry, of Norwalk, Ohio, was arrested following the incident. The New York Times and The LA Times later reported that police charged Berry with three misdemeanor counts of battery. According to Local 10, the arrest report alleged Berry had been drinking on the flight from Philadelphia to Miami. He was accused of groping two female flight attendants’ breasts and alleged to have attacked a male attendant.
One post of the mock video on Twitter has 1.4 million views at the time of writing, and was posted with the caption: “Alfredo Rivera is the greatest storyteller of our time.”
Piers Morgan was among those to share the clip. He wrote: “This is utterly fantastic. We need more people like Alfredo in the world.” One Twitter user wrote: “I’ve never heard of Frontier Airlines, but I’ll book a flight to just about anywhere immediately if it means I can have this gentleman as my flight attendant! Another said: “I would be more than happy to have this gentleman attending any or all my future flights.”
The Real Spark also shared the video on Twitter and YouTube. They posted the footage, originally from TikTok on the platform on August 5.
Watch the real Local 10 report, with the real Alfredo Rivera, below:
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