Alec Baldwin kicked off plane after row over Words With Friends app

Flight trouble: Alec Baldwin was playing 'words with friends' on his IPhone
David Gardner11 April 2012
The Weekender

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Even for an A-list Hollywood actor, it is a bizarre addiction to admit to.

Yet Alec Baldwin today said his obsession with a mobile phone game led to him being thrown off a flight when he refused to stop playing.

The 53-year-old claimed he got into hot water with an American Airlines crew because he was so addicted to Words With Friends, a Scrabble-like game on his iPhone.

Tweeting throughout the incident at Los Angeles airport, he blasted the airline as "where retired Catholic school gym teachers from the Fifties find jobs as flight attendants".

He tweeted to his 600,000 followers: "Flight attendant on American reamed me out 4 playing WORDS W FRIENDS while we sat at the gate, not moving."

Asked why he didn't stop, the star of US sitcom '30 Rock' replied: "It'swelladdicting."
In the game, players compete online to score the most points by building words with tiles on a Scrabble-like game board. It can be played on mobile phones or via Facebook. The game has become hugely popular worldwide. The firm which developed it was bought last year for $53.3 million by Zynga.

It took up Baldwin's cause with posts on Twitter that featured the phrase "#LetAlecPlay". The actor also told his followers he had changed his username in the game to #theresalwaysunited, creating publicity for American's arch rival airline.

However, frustrated passengers stuck on the plane for an extra hour while Baldwin was taken back to the terminal, told a different story. Steve Weiss, who was sitting across the aisle from Baldwin, said: "Apparently he said he was playing a game, but he was actually talking on the phone.

She [the flight attendant] was very nice. The door was closed, they just announced that they were pulling away from the gate. He got up, threw his papers on the floor and stormed into the bathroom, slammed the door closed, beat on the wall and then came back.

"He said 'If you want to kick me off, kick me off'," he told the New York Post.

A crew member said Baldwin didn't leave them with any choice.

"He was violent, abusive and aggressive. He got into the bathroom and started beating on the wall and he pounded his fists on the galley counter. Yelling, screaming, very ugly. It was unsafe to keep him on board."

She said she asked him five times to get off his phone.

"He was asked five times. I contacted the captain. We were brought back in and he was let off the plane. Everybody is the same. Everyone has to follow the rules, it doesn't matter who you are."

A spokesman for Baldwin said last night: "Alec was asked to leave a flight for playing Words with Friends while parked at the gate. He loves WWF so much that he was willing to leave a plane for it, but he has already boarded another AA flight."

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