by WorldTribune Staff, September 8, 2026 Non-AI Real World News
What exactly happened on American Airlines Flight 618 on Sept. 3?
Arthur Layne Lundeen
The Newark-bound flight out of Dallas had to make an emergency landing in Baltimore after a first-class passenger reportedly went on a violent rampage. The passenger, later identified as 67-year-old Arizona real estate agent Arthur Layne Lundeen, had been sitting next to Jonathan Cahn—a best-selling author and controversial Messianic rabbi often referred to as a “Doomsday prophet.”
What started as a friendly conversation became a literal “spiritual war,” according to Cahn.
Lundeen reportedly flipped “in a split second from light to dark,” began screaming, and launched into a tirade of racist and homophobic slurs, reports say.
Lundeen physically attacked Cahn, striking him and eventually biting another passenger who tried to intervene, according to reports.
Flight attendants, aided by fellow travelers, including a retired police officer, managed to subdue Lundeen using zip ties and duct tape to secure him to his first-class seat.
The plane diverted to BWI Airport, where police boarded and arrested Lundeen. He was subsequently fired from his real estate job.
“Cahn leads the Beth Israel Worship Center in Wayne, New Jersey, part of the Messianic Jewish movement that believes Jesus is the messiah, making it generally considered a branch of Christianity,” Chris Nesi reported for the New York Post on Tuesday.
Cahn’s 2015 book “The Mystery of the Shemitah,” suggested a great global catastrophe was imminent, with the New York Times calling him a “Doomsday prophet.”
Cahn claimed it was the cover of his newest novel, “The Altar of Pergamon,” that “triggered” Lundeen after they had been chatting amiably on the Newark-bound American Airlines flight.
“I have never seen someone change in a split second from light to dark as I saw then, as if something had taken him over,” Cahn said about Lundeen. “He went from the friendliest guy in the world to this dark person.”
Cahn said he referenced “the reality of the real power of god on Earth and in our lives,” leaving Lundeen irate and “cursing Jesus” and “blaspheming Jesus and God.”
He claimed Lundeen then started saying, “It’s all bulls–t. Jesus is bulls–t.”
Lundeen then became violent, Cahn said: “The plane is in shock, the pilot is radioing the ground, for an emergency landing. We’re fighting over my computer.”
Cahn said one flyer who helped subdue Lundeen told him: “You were being tested. God was testing you.”
Cahn later detailed the ordeal aboard Flight 618 in a YouTube video.
Lundeen is facing state charges of second-degree assault and disorderly conduct.
