A California woman who repeatedly punched a Southwest Airlines flight attendant last year, drawing blood in her face and breaking three of her teeth, was sentenced Friday to 15 months in prison, prosecutors said.
The woman, Vyvianna M. Quinonez, 29, of Sacramento, will also have to pay nearly $26,000 in restitution and a $7,500 fine, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California. A video of the attack, which took place in May 2021, was widely viewed on social media.
U.S. District Court Judge Todd W. Robinson has also ordered Ms. Quinonez to be released on supervised release for three years after completing her sentence, during which time she will be banned from flying a commercial aircraft.
The attack came amid a spate of unruly and violent behavior from passengers pushing, beating and yelling at flight attendants. Within days of the attack, two major airlines, American and Southwest, postponed plans to reintroduce alcohol on flights in an effort to stop the behavior. Both airlines have since resumed alcohol sales.
“Aircraft violence endangers the lives of everyone on board,” Randy Grossman, the US attorney for California’s Southern District, said in a statement Friday. “Attacks against flight crew members performing essential duties to ensure passenger safety will not be tolerated.”
A lawyer for Ms. Quinonez, who pleaded guilty in December to the assault, could not be immediately reached for comment late Friday.
In a letter filed with the court on May 20, Ms. Quinonez apologized for assaulting the flight attendant. She said she was depressed and humiliated because of the negative attention. The experience, she said, “changed me profoundly.”
On May 23, 2021, near the end of a flight from Sacramento to San Diego, a flight attendant asked Ms. Quinonez to fasten her seatbelt, put on her tabletop and “wear her face mask appropriately,” prosecutors said.
Ms Quinonez used her phone to film the flight attendant and pushed the woman, prosecutors said. The attack escalated from there, as recorded on video by another passenger.
According to the video, Ms. Quinonez, who was sitting in an aisle seat, stood up and punched the clerk several times in the face. She also grabbed her hair before the woman could walk down the aisle again. Several passengers reached for Mrs. Quinonez’s clothes to try to stop her.
Prosecutors said the flight attendant, who was not named in court documents, was taken to a hospital with injuries, including a swollen eye, a bruised arm and a cut under her eye that required stitches. They said she also had three broken teeth, two of which needed to be replaced with crowns.
In a letter dated May 18 to Judge Robinson, a Southwest representative said the company wanted the sentence to serve as a deterrent to unruly and violent behavior. The letter said the company’s executive team had heard of “numerous flight attendants” who felt attacked during a pandemic that has sent fears of travel rising to all-time highs.
“What happened on Flight 700 was absolutely horrific,” wrote Sonya Lacore, a vice president at Southwest. “In my 20+ year career with Southwest, I have never seen such an unforgivable, violent attack on a flight attendant by a passenger. Worse, the incident was caught on video and broadcast through television and media outlets.”
“The video of the attack still makes me sick,” she added.
