A Denton man touched a woman on a Southwest Airlines flight this week and then yelled at flight attendants after she moved to a new seat, causing the flight to be diverted, federal authorities say.

Justin Riley Brafford, 29, faces a felony count of interference with a flight crew and a misdemeanor assault charge. He made an initial court appearance Wednesday in New Mexico and remains in federal custody.

According to a criminal complaint, Brafford got on Southwest Flight 859, from Los Angeles to Dallas, on Tuesday and sat in a middle seat. The woman in the aisle seat said that Brafford put his arm on her leg as the plane was getting ready to take off and that she leaned away from him and tried to ignore him.

But Brafford got closer to the woman, she later told an FBI agent, and began "playing footsies" with her. She asked him to stop kicking her, and then tugged on her sweater and started asking personal questions — her name, where she lived, whether she was staying alone at a hotel. When the woman declined an invitation to go out with him, Brafford whispered "don't [expletive] with me" into her ear, she said.

The woman then asked a flight attendant if she could move to another seat.

The flight attendant — who thought Brafford and the woman were a couple based on how close they were sitting to each other — changed the woman's seat, then retrieved her belongings from the old seat. When he brought her a drink later, she was crying and said Brafford had come to the new seat and confronted her, according to the complaint.

When the flight attendant spoke to Brafford, he responded in a belligerent manner and started cursing and yelling. Brafford wasn't acting "like a normal person" and seemed to go "from zero to sixty in nano-seconds," the complaint says, leading the flight attendant to believe he might be on drugs.

The flight attendant notified the pilot, who agreed to divert the flight to Albuquerque. Flight attendants had restraints and blankets ready in case Brafford caused more trouble, the complaint says, but the flight landed without further incident and he was taken into custody.

In an interview with authorities, Brafford said that he and the woman had been watching videos on her computer and that he thought she was flirting with him, according to the complaint. He may have misread the situation, he said.

Brafford also admitted to using methamphetamines the day before the flight and said he had overdosed on heroin Saturday, according to the complaint. He also told the FBI agent that God had been talking to him during the flight.

The flight and two others were delayed an hour and a half, and a number of passengers missed connecting flights.

In a statement, Southwest said: "The safety and comfort of everyone on board every operating aircraft is our highest concern."

Sexual misconduct — verbal harassment, unwanted touching, or worse — has persisted as an in-flight problem for years. Although no comprehensive statistics are kept about sexual assaults on planes, a 2017 survey of nearly 2,000 flight attendants found that 1 in 5 had received a report of passenger-on-passenger sexual assault.

In June 2017 a woman said she was raped in the bathroom of an American Airlines aircraft, and the airline offered her $5,000 for her "nuisance claim." American later apologized for how it handled the incident and changed how it deals with reports of sexual assault and harassment on its aircraft.

Drug and alcohol abuse is a relatively common catalyst for in-flight incidents. In 2016, the International Air Transport Association reportedthat intoxication from alcohol or drugs was identified as a factor in 33 percent of reported cases of unruly passengers.

If convicted of interfering with the flight crew, Brafford would face up to 20 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine. The assault charge carries a penalty of up to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine.