United Airlines flight headed for Taipei returns to SFO due to unruly passenger

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United Airlines plane (Photo by Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

SAN FRANCISCO - Officials at San Francisco International Airport confirm a United Airlines flight headed to Taipei returned to SFO Thursday due to an unruly passenger.

SFO's duty manager said United Flight 871 landed at 6:50 p.m. Details of the passenger's behavior were not disclosed.

According to the FlightAware website, which shows flight's tracking history, the flight departed on time at 2:54 p.m. The site indicates the flight had a total travel time of a little more than four hours and the map shows where plane turned around over the Pacific Ocean.

The disruptive passenger was reportedly removed by law enforcement.

In 2022, lawmakers in Congress introduced the Protection from Abusive Passengers Act.

The bill defines an abusive passenger as "any individual who engages in behavior that results in a civil penalty or conviction for assaulting, threatening, or intimidating a crew member or passenger on an aircraft flight, or who takes any action to interfere with security screening personnel or any security system related to civil aviation security."

The Federal Aviation Administration or Attorney General would provide the personal information of those abusive passengers to the Transportation Security Administration. TSA would maintain the list and according to the bill abusive passengers would be ineligible for TSA PreCheck or the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Global Engry programs with some exceptions, according to the bill's language.

The legislation was reintroduced as recently as March of this year.