Leading leisure airline
Jet2.com has issued a bill for more than £50,000 to a pair of disruptive brothers, alongside a lifetime ban, after their aggressive and violent behaviour led to a flight having to be diverted last week.
Alfie and Kenneth Springthorpe, from Sidcup, displayed a catalogue of appalling behaviour onboard the aircraft which included causing damage as well as unacceptable levels of aggression and even physical violence.
As a result, the highly trained crew were left with no choice other than to divert the aircraft, which was flying from London Stansted to Heraklion (Crete), to Corfu so that police could offload them. This led to a delay of approximately three hours and 45 minutes before the flight continued safely to Crete.
Following the delay caused by the divert, the
Jet2.com crew ran out of operating hours meaning that they were unable to operate the flight back from Crete to London Stansted Airport on the same day. This resulted in
Jet2.com providing overnight hotel accommodation, transport to and from Heraklion Airport, as well as food & drink, for over 200 customers and crew.
As well as fully supporting the authorities with any subsequent investigation,
Jet2.com will now vigorously pursue the costs incurred by this divert.
Phil Ward, Managing Director of
Jet2.com said: “The deplorable behaviour of these two passengers left our highly trained crew with no choice but to divert the aircraft to the nearest airport so that the police could offload them. This means that their actions directly impacted customers looking forward to enjoying their well-deserved holidays in Crete, as well as customers and crew who then had to stay in a hotel for an unwanted extra night. It is completely unacceptable that the pair caused such disruption for so many people and they must now face the consequences of their actions. As a family friendly airline, we take a zero-tolerance approach to such behaviour and we have a successful track record when it comes to pursuing and recovering any losses that we incur. We would of course also like to apologise to everyone impacted by this behaviour, which is thankfully very rare. Now that international travel has reopened properly, we hope this acts as a timely reminder that acting in a disruptive fashion can well lead to very serious consequences.”
