Hollywood actor Alec Baldwin was kicked off a flight leaving Los Angeles International Airport on Tuesday afternoon (December 6, 2011) following a dispute over the cell phone game 'Words with Friends'. Seemingly on his way to high score, the 30 Rock star began a row with a flight attendant over his usage of the Scrabble-type application and was duly asked to leave.
Following his removal, Baldwin took to his cell-phone once again - this time on Twitter - to vent his anger at American Airlines, telling followers he would never use the airline again because it is "where retired Catholic school gym teachers from the 1950's find jobs as flight attendants". Clarifying his remarks, Alec explained, "Flight attendant on American reamed me out 4 playing Words W Friends while we sat at the gate, not moving". His spokesman Matthew Hiltzik later told CNN, "He loves Wwf so much that he was willing to leave a plane for it, but he has already boarded another AA flight". Words With Friends is a multiplayer word-building game in which players take turns to build words on a crossword puzzle style board. Its rules are essentially based on those of Scrabble, but up to 20 games can be played simultaneously and users receive 'push notifications' to alert them it is there turn to devise a word. It appears American Airlines are looking to establish exactly what happened on the flight, with a post to the actor on their Twitter page reading, "Mr. Baldwin, we are looking into this. Please DM us contact information".
Words with Friends first rose to prominence in 2009, after the blues-guitarist John Mayer tweeted that the game was "the new Twitter". The application promptly surged in popularity and has been downloaded over 6 million times to date. Earlier this year, actress Eliza Dushku asked Twitter followers to search for her username on the game, adding, "Let's play Words With Friends".