Kadia Tubman, a news correspondent from Brooklyn, New York, went viral on October 16 after using her earring to keep a fellow passenger, identified as Otto, out of her personal space on a Delta flight.
The man described her as “passive-aggressive” in an X post, questioning whether her actions were “legal.”
Many users insisted that Tubman deserved a chance to explain her side of the story before they passed judgment.
Highlights
- Kadia Tubman shared her side of the viral flight incident, explaining why she used her earring.
- Social media users rallied behind Tubman, calling her a “queen” and criticizing Otto.
- Otto blamed the flight attendant and said he had no plans to sue Tubman.
She responded on October 18, sharing her account under the caption, “10 facts from that flight.”
Woman who went viral for using an earring to deter a man on a flight broke her silence
Tubman said that when she took her seat, Otto was already using his laptop with his hand resting on the middle armrest.
However, when she eventually tried to use the armrest herself, she could not because “he was all over it,” taking up more room than his share and extending “past the armrest boundary,” she explained.
According to Tubman, Otto kept “rubbing against” her arm. When she tried to sleep, he repeatedly lifted her arm, waking her up.
She said she politely asked him to stop and demonstrated how his arm was making contact with hers.
In response, Otto reiterated that there was not enough space but eventually “moved over.”
“But after a little while he shifted back,” Tubman recalled.
She said this caused her to remove her earring and place it on her sleeve.
“At first, it didn’t poke him when he leaned over into my seat. When it finally did because he kept moving his arm up & down (and not bc of turbulence, as he claimed), he was so bothered, he immediately took out his phone [and took a picture].”
The picture was the same one Otto later shared on social media.
Tubman claimed that he asked whether her actions were working.
She replied, “Yes,” before explaining how.
Tubman accused Otto of lying to the flight attendant and avoiding a meeting with the captain
According to Tubman, Otto compared her earring to “a weapon” and asked for her name so he could involve his lawyer.
He then demanded that she remove the earring, but she refused, explaining that it had “finally” stopped him from touching her.
Tubman said Otto disregarded her explanation and called the flight attendant.
“By this time he’d fully repositioned himself in the seat, nudged between the chair and the window, a position he could have sat in the whole time,” Tubman claimed.
When the flight attendant arrived, Otto allegedly told her that Tubman had been leaning over into his seat and “stabbing him during turbulence.”
Tubman said she looked the flight attendant “in her eyes” and told her that the man was not being truthful.
She added that she “would be happy to speak with him and the captain or staff at the gate.”
Finally, Tubman explained, “I got off the plane first and waited for him [Otto]. He walked past me. I said, ‘sir, sir.’ He kept walking. I waited for the captain and eventually left.”
People were quick to side with Tubman after she shared her account.
Netizens turned the incident into a gender debate while hailing Tubman as a “queen”
“I am absolutely on her side. You would have to be so close to somebody for an earring to hurt you. He was 100 percent all up in her personal space,” one user wrote.
“Men know no boundaries, and when they learn that the hard way, they play the victim as always. A tale as old as this gender and their a**sive behavior,” another commented.
A third used the incident as an opportunity to encourage women to “carry safety pins” to teach men who struggle to respect personal boundaries a lesson.
“No need to explain yourself queen, those that get it get it,” a fourth commenter wrote, while another remarked, “These men are so bothered, oh my god.”
One user, meanwhile, offered an explanation for why they believed Otto had avoided meeting with the flight captain.
“He walked off because he knew he was in the wrong,” they said.
Otto offered a different explanation for avoiding the meeting
In a follow-up to his original X post, Otto said the flight attendant who had observed the situation did not ask Tubman to remove the earring.
Instead, he claimed the attendant asked both of them to wait at the gate, but he could not stay because he “had to get to work.”
Otto also clarified whether he intended to sue Tubman after questioning the legality of her actions, saying he had no plans to do so.
He, once again, reprimanded the flight attendant, writing that he would not have posted about the incident “if the attendant had just done her job.”
“Time to fly United,” he concluded.
"She gets an A+ in my book for creative troubleshooting," a netizen joked
