Jet2 has hit a pair of brothers who forced one of its flights to divert with a £50,000 bill and banned them from flying with the airline for life.
Alfie and Kenneth Springthorpe, from Sidcup, southeast London, “displayed a catalogue of appalling behaviour” during the flight from Stansted to Crete last week, the carrier said in a statement.
The plane was forced to divert to Corfu after the brothers became aggressive, violent and caused damage to the aircraft, a Jet2 spokesperson added.
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.
The delay also meant the cabin crew ran out of operating hours and had to stay overnight on Crete so 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.
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.”
