A couple of days ago, View form the Wing broke the story of how a Delta Air Lines pilot was arrested onboard an aircraft. While I covered this at the time, authorities have now released more information about what happened, and… it’s bad.
Homeland Security storms aircraft, arrests pilot
This incident happened on Saturday, July 26, 2025, and involves Delta flight DL2809, operating from Minneapolis (MSP) to San Francisco (SFO). After a 3hr55min flight, the Boeing 757-300 touched down in San Francisco at 9:31PM, and taxied to its arrival gate.
After the plane arrived at the gate, passengers collected their luggage as usual. However, roughly 10 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officers then stormed the aircraft, and told passengers to be seated. Some of them ran to the front of the aircraft, and grabbed the first officer, and put him in handcuffs. Since this was a 757, deplaning generally happens through the second door.
The first officer and his belongings were removed from the aircraft, at which point passengers could continue the deplaning process. The captain was caught completely off guard, and reportedly told passengers that he had no clue what just happened.
As a passenger explained:
“I looked at him and I said, ‘What’s going on?’ He said, ‘I have no idea,’ And he genuinely looked like this was a surprise that all of a sudden there was people on the plane because he had had us stand up, we were starting to take our stuff out for arrival and everybody was already in the overhead bins.”
The pilot was wanted on child sex abuse charges
The Delta pilot who was arrested has been identified as 34-year-old Rustom Bhagwagar. Initially reports suggested that he had been arrested on charges of child sexual abuse materials. However, it’s much worse than that.
Instead, DHS has shared that Bhagwagar has been charged with five counts of oral copulation with a child under 10 years of age. He’s now being held in a detention facility in Martinez, California, in lieu of $5 million bail. Detectives with the Contra Costa Sheriff’s Office had been investigating him for several months, since April 2025.
Delta released a statement that it was “appalled by reports of the charges related to the arrest,” and added that the pilot has been suspended, pending an investigation. The company directed all inquiries to law enforcement.
At first I thought it was a bit of an overkill that you’d have 10 people storm the aircraft in this way, rather than just meeting him in the terminal. But I suppose the concern is that if he was tipped off about authorities waiting for him, he might get suspicious, and try to make a run for it, or do something else irrational.
If he ends up being found guilty of these charges, I hope he gets the help he needs and punishment he deserves (to prevent something like this from happening again). Child sexual abuse materials are horrible enough, but this is infinitely worse.
This isn’t the first time that we’ve seen a pilot arrested in this way. Roughly a year ago, a Frontier Airlines pilot was arrested onboard an aircraft, shortly before the departure of a flight. As you’d expect, the flight ended up being canceled. I guess a “bad actor” having the job of being a pilot at least makes them easy to catch, since they’re easy to track based on their flight rosters.
Bottom line
A Delta flight from Minneapolis to San Francisco had a dramatic ending, when DHS stormed the plane upon landing, to arrest one of the pilots. It has now been confirmed that he was wanted on charges of oral copulation with a child under 10 years of age.
Like any other profession, there are some bad apples who are pilots. The reason I covered this story is because passengers witnessing the pilot of their flight getting arrested has to be one of the more unusual things to happen onboard an aircraft.
What do you make of this situation?
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