Passenger punches United Airlines employee before flight to Houston

A new video appears to show a United Airlines passenger repeatedly hitting a flight attendant before a flight to Houston this week.

The woman who recorded it says the man got angry when she asked him to move out of her assigned seat.

Watch as the passenger punches repeatedly. Other passengers reach out to stop him, and he backs up.

Naya Jimenez shot this video before her flight took off from San Francisco to Houston just after midnight. She says the man was angry because she asked his wife and then him to move out of her assigned seat.

“They had to bring in a gate attendant to try to talk to both of them, and then, he began slurring his speech a little bit, like, ‘Sir, why are you smiling at me?’ is the first thing he said,” said Naya Jiminez.

United Airlines confirms staff contacted law enforcement. But that was after Jimenez says the man nearly jumped out of the plane.

“After he paused for a minute, he ran toward where the pilot was, where the emergency exit doors are, and attempted to open it — successfully opened the emergency exit, was about to jump down, and the plane is elevated, right, so he would have jumped apparently two stories to the ground, and the flight attendants just kicked in, and everybody pulled him back to safety,” said Jimenez.