A plane passenger who was restrained with duct tape and cable ties after an alleged violent and racist midair rant earlier this month says he remembers nothing of the incident.

“I don’t remember any of what happened,” Layne Arthur Lundeen told an Annapolis court on the day after the alleged mid-flight fracas.

An audio recording of the court hearing was obtained by the Baltimore Banner and released on Tuesday (US time). On it, district court commissioner George Haag can be heard advising Lundeen of the charges against him.

“I assaulted a police officer? Is that what it says?” Lundeen said. “I don’t have glasses.”

Lundeen, a 67-year-old from Tucson, is accused of being at the centre of a violent midair scuffle that forced a September 3 American Airlines flight from Dallas to Newark, New Jersey, to make an emergency landing.

Retail boss Richard Olenick was also aboard American Airlines flight 618. He was on his way home from a work convention with a colleague, retired police officer Juan Mejia, when chaos broke out about two hours in.

“Everything was fine, until it wasn’t,” Olenick told FOX 10.

He alleges that Lundeen began shouting obscenities and abuse at a flight attendant.

Lundeen is then accused of grabbing the neck of the man sitting next to him, and trying to choke him. When a woman tried to stop the attack, Lundeen reportedly hit her, prompting Olenick and Mejia to rush down the aisle to intervene.

“[The] gentlemen sitting two rows behind us started becoming belligerent, making derogatory remarks of the staff of American Airlines and other passengers, racial slurs, vulgar language, very offensive to the women” in the row behind him, Mejia said.

Lundeen is restrained in his seat after the incident aboard the American Airlines flight. Photo: Richard Olenick

Mejia and Olenick eventually managed to restrain Lundeen, although Meija was bitten on one hand in the scuffle.

“He didn’t break skin, just left teeth marks on my hand. We were covered in his blood,” he told CBS News. “He was bleeding quite a bit from cuts that he inflicted on himself.”

Lundeen was restrained with cable ties and rolls of duct tape handed over by flight attendants.

The plane made an emergency landing in Baltimore, where Lundeen was arrested.

He was later charged with second-degree assault and disorderly conduct, and had his first court appearance the next day. During the appearance, Lundeen did admit to consuming “two screwdrivers”.

“Oh my God. What a mess … I don’t remember any of it,” he said.

Lundeen told the court he was travelling to help one of his daughters move house, and that it was also her birthday.

“I got a double whammy for my trip. Well, now it’s a triple whammy,” he said.

Lundeen said his last memory was speaking to fellow first-class passenger Jonathan Cahn – a rabbi who was described by The New York Times in 2019 as  a “celebrity pastor” and “an entrepreneurial doomsday prophet”.

Cahn has told media that Lundeen was initially “really friendly”. But there was a dramatic shift when the conversation turned to religion and Cahn’s books — which focus on biblical prophecies, ancient mysteries, and prophetic warnings.

Cahn said that Lundeen grabbed him by the throat, hit him and broke his laptop. He said Lundeen began cursing at him and God.

“At that moment, I’ve never seen anything like this. His face changes. His voice changes,” he told The Christian Broadcasting Network.

“We are wrestling on the plane. I mean, we are literally wrestling.”

Following the allegations, Lundeen was sacked from his job at a Tucson real estate agency.

The Banner reports that he was released on his own recognisance after his court appearance and ordered to abstain from alcohol and drugs, except for any prescriptions.

He will next appear in court on October 19.