Victoria Osteen pitches hissy fit, gets thrown off plane

Joel Osteen's life must be pretty tough. Not only does he have to run the nation's largest church, keep up with the demands of a rigorous television and personal appearance schedule, maintain his preternaturally well-groomed image and rake in tons of money, but he also has to find time here and there to try to bring us all closer to God. So Houstonist is sure Pastor Joel wasn't too happy when his wife acted like a holy terror on a Continental flight Monday.

The Osteens were heading to Vail for a little winter getaway when Victoria Osteen noticed a drink had been spilled in her first-class seat. The Chronicle reported that Mrs. Osteen had a flight attendant clean the spill up, but "the spill apparently was not cleaned up to [her] satisfaction." What happened next is a little unclear — the mildest reports say Mrs. Osteen "stepped into the jetway to talk with the flight's pilot and other personnel," but a passenger on the plane told KTRK a different version:

"She violently ran towards the cockpit, scaring everyone around her," said passenger Knicky Van Slyke. "Everyone was terrified about what was going on. And a bunch of flight attendants ran up and had to restrain her. She was banging on the door [of the cockpit]."

The result, according to the FBI, is that the Osteens were removed from the flight. Lakewood church's initial statement on the incident said "the misunderstanding ... was resolved when Victoria voluntarily removed herself from the situation," though church spokesman Don Iloff later modified that a bit: "In semantics, [the family] might have been asked to be removed. Really, it was more of a mutual thing." The disturbance delayed the flight for two hours.

Houstonist isn't fooled by the spokespeople calling this a minor indicent. We've traveled by air before, and we have yet to see a minor incident that ends with someone being removed from the plane. Now, we know what you're thinking: "How could these fine, upright, attractive people be involved in something like this?" The answer, of course, is clear: Victoria Osteen was trying to teach the people on that airplane a moral lesson — it's probably something out of Your Best Life Now. Houstonist is sure it will all be covered in a future TV broadcast — "Passengers From Hell on the Plane to Heaven," perhaps?