July 27, 2025
A video of Nicole Pruitt preventing a woman trying to break into the cockpit has gone viral.
Nicole Pruitt, a Georgia grandmother and former Army soldier, stepped in to stop a passenger from storming the cockpit during her July 16 Delta Air Lines flight from Atlanta to Tucson, because no one else was doing anything to control the situation.
According to WSB-TV, Pruitt was flying to Tucson to see her newest grandchild when she noticed another passenger having a strange conversation.
“She didn’t want to be on the plane no more, she said God told her to do it, she had a calling. And I’m just like wait a minute. I don’t know about this conversation you got going on but, not today,” Pruitt recalled.
“Nobody else was doing nothing, so I just knew I had to do something,” Pruitt told CNN’s Tucson affiliate KOLD. “I’ve got to make it home to my kids, my children, my grandchildren.”
While Pruitt was in the air, helping to stop a woman who seemed to be having a mental health issue, her son, Tyrique Perry, was on the ground, anxiously awaiting news of her flight.
“Those are kids on that plane that have a whole life to live, those are grandparents on that plane, just people full of life and potential,” Perry told the outlet.
Once he found out that his mother was the passenger who stopped a woman from entering the plane’s cockpit, Perry was not surprised.
“Not surprised. Sometimes, it’s just a natural instinct and you’ve got to get it done,” Perry noted.
Perry then posted a video of his mother detaining the woman to his TikTok account, where it nearly instantly went viral and has since accumulated over 1.2 million views.
According to Delta Air Lines, after the passenger was subdued and secured, the pilot turned the plane around and headed back to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
Eventually, the plane took off again and made its way to Tucson, nearly three hours after it was scheduled to arrive.
The airline also provided a statement, thanking the passengers and crew who helped de-escalate the situation, and apologizing to their customers for the incident.
“Delta sincerely appreciates the actions of our crew and customers for de-escalating the situation. We apologize to our customers for the delay and thank them for their understanding,” the airline stated.
According to Delta spokesperson Stan Heaton, medical personnel were on the scene when the plane arrived and law enforcement was notified, but Heaton told The Arizona Republic that he was not sure if the woman who tried to charge the cockpit multiple times was detained by officers or not.
The outlet tried to contact Pruitt for comment on July 23, but as she was traveling back to Atlanta from Tucson, she was unavailable. The outlet tried to reach her again on the following day, but Pruitt did not respond to a phone call from the newspaper.
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