The 46-year-old man is said to have guzzled duty-free alcohol before his booze-fuelled meltdown.
He was arrested when Icelandair's New York-bound flight from Iceland landed at New York's JFK International Airport on Thursday, CBS News said.
Andy Ellwood, a contributor with Forbes, was aboard the flight and snapped a photo which quickly went viral.
The photo showed a man bound to his chair with plastic ties and tape.
Beneath the picture, he wrote: "Passenger drank all of his duty free liquor on the flight from Iceland to JFK yesterday."
"When he became unruly, (i.E. Trying to choke the woman next to him and screaming the plane was going to crash), fellow passengers subdued him and tie him up for the rest of the flight.
"He was escorted off the flight by police when it landed."
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The arrested man, who has not been named, is understood to hold an Icelandic passport, the report said.
His tirade aboard the plane began several hours into the flight with about two hours left till landing, the report said.
But prosecutors are said to have declined to charge him because too many passengers were reluctant to discuss his outburst with authorities, it said.