Was Arianna Huffington Escorted Off a Flight by Police?
Last Friday night, Arianna Huffington was in Las Vegas, mingling with celebrities. And the next night? According to a tipster, Arianna was being escorted off a plane by Port Authority police—for wanton, unsafe Blackberry-ing.
Arianna's Twitter feed places her in Vegas Friday night, dining with John Cusack, Mario Batali, Floyd Mayweather, and others. The following night, according to our tipster, Arianna was on board United Flight 7118, the shuttle leaving DC at 10 p.m., bound for LaGuardia. (We emailed HuffPo's PR man to ask if Arianna was on this flight; no word yet, but we'll update with his reply). That, our tipster says, is when the trouble began:
I was on a United Express shuttle flight from DC to LaGuardia on Saturday night. Arianna Huffington was in my row. She wouldn't turn off her blackberry, even when we pushed back from the gate; we took off and it became apparent that the phone was still on, which very much upset her neighbor and a burly Brooklyn type a few rows behind her, who started heckling both her and the flight attendant ("Hey lady! Don't you speak English?" "How come she gets to use her electronic devices but nobody else does?"). Nobody seemed to have any idea who she was. When we landed, both she and the heckler were pulled off the plane first by Port Authority cops. The woman who had been sitting next to her said, "Wasn't that Arianna Huffington?" The flight attendant said, "No! I'll tell you who it was," whips out his passenger list, and there she was. Seat 1A. Wish I'd gotten a picture of her standing there at the gate with the cops, but I didn't.
Questioned further, our tipster added, "it was definitely her, i saw her name on the passenger list and there is no mistaking that voice, anyway. she was telling whomever she was on the phone with to keep arizona at the top and not to do a normal roundup. she was wearing glasses, black jeans, and black ballet flats, and she had a purple blackberry, bose headphones, a huge ipod... The flight attendant asked the two of them to get up first and then the rest of us got off. Arianna was talking to them at the gate and her heckler was talking to them separately at the bridge thing where you step off the plane."
Purple Blackberry? See above photo, taken just a couple months ago! It's all plausible! Anyone else who happened to be on this flight, email us. That includes you, Arianna.
[Photo: Getty]