The man who was involved in the incident on the viral American Airlines Flight 618 has told people that his name is Jonathan Cahn, who is both an author and a minister. The flight, which was flying from Dallas-Fort Worth to Newark on Sept. 3, was diverted to Baltimore after passenger Arthur Lundeen, aged 67, is said to have become violent. According to a report from CBS News New York, the retired law enforcement officer Juan Mejia saw Lundeen having his hands round the neck of the man sitting next to him. Mejia stated that the attack happened “just like a light switch.” NBC New York also reported that the passenger sitting next to Lundeen was attacked while the passenger was making racist and anti-gay comments.
The seatmate was not given a public name in the initial reports; Cahn has now stated that it was he. “I was the unidentified passenger,” Cahn says in his recently released statement. “And I was actually attacked 30,000 feet in the sky.” Charisma reported Cahn’s identification on September 7, and the description he provides is similar to that of the earlier eyewitness accounts, including the neck attack and the incident involving his laptop.
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According to Cahn, the encounter did not start in a violent way; in fact, he and Lundeen talked for several hours. Cahn states that Lundeen spoke to him about his family and his work, while Cahn finally told him that he was Jewish, that he was a minister and that he believed in Jesus. The conversation then turned to the subject of salvation, prophecy and the stories which Cahn says convinced him of the reality of God.
Cahn then states that the atmosphere changed almost immediately; the man suddenly rejected everything he had been told, described it as “bull,” cursed Jesus and became hostile. Cahn describes the change as so sudden that it seemed as if “something had taken him over”; he later adds that Lundeen cursed both God and Jesus, alternated between being friendly and angry, and threatened to punch Cahn’s “Jewish face.”
The situation developed physically. Cahn states that Lundeen put his hands round his neck in what at first looked like a playful chokehold and that the man then hit him in the chest, moved towards his face as if intending to start a fight and made crude comments which caused the flight attendants to react. Independent witnesses had previously told CBS that Lundeen had grabbed his neighbour by the neck and that the cabin had suddenly changed from a state of quiet to one of chaos.
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Jonathan Cahn, the previously unidentified passenger attacked aboard Flight 618, explains what happened in the moments before the confrontation.
A rather strange aspect of Cahn’s story is the situation with his laptop and his recently published book, The Altar of Pergamon. He states that a dark, rectangular spot suddenly appeared on his computer screen that week. While on the flight, Lundeen is said to have knocked the computer twice, after which Cahn claims that the dark area expanded to cover a large part of the screen. Cahn saw the occurrence as having a spiritual meaning since the laptop held his writings and research.
Cahn states that the situation became more disturbing when Lundeen looked at the cover of The Altar of Pergamon, a book which he describes as one that looks at spiritual evil and the biblical “throne of Satan.” Cahn says that Lundeen then grew annoyed and kept asking, “What did you do?”, before once more cursing Jesus; later, when Cahn tried to get up from his seat with the computer, Lundeen rushed for it and tried violently to take it away.
According to Cahn, Lundeen then grabbed his already injured left arm, which caused him great pain. Other passengers got involved. Cahn recalls Lundeen screaming while men held him down using zip ties and duct tape as the plane was descending. The police arrested Lundeen once the plane had landed, and the FBI then became involved.
Cahn relates this incident to the events that occurred around the time of his books. He states that earlier releases coincided with a flood at his ministry, a mysterious illness that temporarily stopped him from walking properly and, on another occasion, a ruptured appendix. Regarding this most recent flight, he says that his phone kept on shutting down, his laptop failed to function properly and some of the copies of his new book were unexpectedly postponed.
Cahn sees those events, together with the incident on Flight 618, as being part of spiritual warfare; however, this conclusion is based on faith and has not been established by the police, the airline or by independent witnesses. Some of the other passengers thought that Lundeen might have suffered a mental breakdown and alcohol was considered as a possible explanation. The fundamental account that Cahn gives of the physical attack agrees with the details previously reported before he revealed his identity.
“There’s more to this story than the media will ever tell you or know,” Cahn says. Whether readers accept his spiritual explanation or not, the previously unnamed victim who was at the heart of the disturbing events on Flight 618 has now stepped forward with a strange account of what he says happened before the duct tape appeared.