Budget airline Jet2 has slapped a pair of brothers with a £50,000 fine and banned them for life, after their “deplorable behaviour” led to a flight being diverted last week.
Brothers Alfie and Kenneth Springthorpe, from Sidcup, southeast London, “displayed a catalogue of appalling behaviour” on the flight from Stansted to Heraklion, Crete, said the carrier in a statement.
The flight - which took place on an unspecified date - was forced to divert to Corfu after the brothers became aggressive, violent and caused damage to the aircraft, added a Jet2 spokesperson.
Passengers were forced to wait on the tarmac for three hours and 45 minutes while local law enforcement dealt with the pair, before the flight could safely take off again for Crete.
Because of the delay, the flight’s cabin crew also ran out of operating hours, meaning they had to stay overnight on Crete and could not work on the return flight.
This meant the airline had to provide overnight accommodation, food and drink and additional transport for more than 200 people due to fly from Crete to the UK.
The airline is currently enforcing a “zero tolerance” policy on aggressive passengers who disrupt flights.
It recently named, shamed, fined and banned customer Catherine Bush after her similarly disruptive behaviour forced a flight to Turkey to divert to Vienna.
Of the Crete incident, Jet2’s managing director Phil Ward 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.
“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.”
Unruly passenger incidents rose sharply during the Covid-19 pandemic, with many confrontations with cabin crew sparked by disagreements over mask-wearing or fuelled by excess alcohol consumption.
Mr Ward used the incident to remind customers: “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.”
