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Aggressive passenger pleads guilty after causing divert

Published: Tue 14 Feb 2017 at 08:40

Updated: Tue 14 Feb 2017 at 08:41

Announcements

Disruptive passenger, Liam McKeown, has been fined by Paisley Sheriff Court after his aggressive and abusive behaviour onboard a Jet2.com Glasgow to Ibiza flight in July last year.

Mr McKeown, 25, pleaded guilty to being drunk on an aircraft and acting in a disruptive manner on an aircraft, both breaches of the Air Navigation Order 2009, after the flight was diverted to Toulouse following his violent outburst onboard. Mr McKeown, from Cumbernauld, was fined £3,200 by the Court as a result.

The diversion resulted in a delay for customers and crew after French police had to board the aircraft to remove Mr McKeown, at which point he became physically violent. McKeown also hit out at the overhead lockers and made physical threats towards the crew.

Jet2.com also took civil proceedings against Mr McKeown to recover losses caused by the divert, with the court judgment awarding in our favour.

This ruling is the latest in a number of successful judgments that Jet2.com has been awarded by the Courts in Scotland, sending out a strong message that this behaviour will not be tolerated and that we will continue to take formal legal action to recover our losses.

Phil Ward, Managing Director of Jet2.com said: “This shows that there are serious consequences if you act in an aggressive fashion onboard an aircraft. Mr McKeown’s actions caused inconvenience and distress for other customers as well as our crew, and as a family friendly airline carrying millions of holidaymakers, many of whom are families, we simply will not tolerate this on our flights. We hope that Mr McKeown has learned an important lesson and that the consequences of his actions send out a strong message that this behaviour will not be tolerated.”

Jet2.com’s Onboard Together initiative commits us to a zero tolerance stance against disruptive passenger behaviour, including banning the sale of alcohol onboard all flights before 08:00BST. This has been well received by both crew and customers and we have called upon airports and retailers to adopt the same responsible approach.

Since launching, more than 600 disruptive passengers have been refused travel and 75 of these, including Liam McKeown, have been given lifetime bans.

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