Arianna Huffington - Arianna Huffington In Spat Over Blackberry Use On Plane

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON, the Greek-American author and co-founder of website 'The Huffington Post', was involved in a spat with another passenger on a recent United Express flight after she refused to turn off her Blackberry mobile phone, reports the New York Post. Huffington was on board a flight to New York when she apparently chose to ignore the captain's request for passengers to turn off their cellular devices.

It is reported that another passenger on the flight identified as 53-year-old Ellis Belodoff of Long Island then began heckling Huffington before standing up and shouting, "Hey, lady! Don't you speak English?" As a verbal altercation ensued, the flight crew alerted the Port Authority Police of New York and New Jersey and a spokeswoman for the authority told Fox News, "The crew did alert our police when it looked like there was a fight brewing, but by the time they landed our police just spoke to them". The spokeswoman added that Huffington "didn't get escorted off the plane by police".

The 60-year-old's own spokesman MARIO RUIZ played down the incident, saying, "Maybe he (Belodoff) was an iPhone fan. As you know, the battle between iPhone lovers and BlackBerry users can get pretty heated".