A Southwest Airlines jetliner on its way to San Francisco returned to Los Angeles International Airport shortly after takeoff because of a fight between two passengers, officials said.

FBI agents met the plane at the gate late Sunday and one person was removed from the Boeing 737, Southwest spokeswoman Melissa Ford told The Associated Press.

The pilot of Flight 2010 decided to return to the Los Angeles airport because of a “rapidly escalating” situation that culminated in a “physical altercation by one person against another,” Ford said Monday. She did not elaborate but said the two passengers involved were not traveling together.

Comedian Mark Curry, the star of the 1990s TV comedy “Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper” who now hosts a morning radio show in San Francisco, said he was asleep on the plane and the commotion woke him up.

“I thought it was a terrorist so I jumped up,” Curry told KNTV-TV, the NBC affiliate in the Bay Area. “The woman was saying he grabbed her neck, saying ‘he choked me! He choked me! He hit me in the head!'” Details