‘You can’t f****** stop me’: Woman who exposed herself on flight before screaming at cabin crew is jailed
‘For passengers to be trapped on a metal tube at 40,000 feet with a drunken thug is terrifying,' judge says
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Your support makes all the difference.A woman who screamed at cabin crew and exposed herself on a flight, forcing the plane to divert, has been jailed.
Natasha Allen subjected cabin crew to a “terrifying” episode of air rage during a Thomas Cook flight from Manchester to Fuerteventura, Manchester Crown Court heard.
Allen’s “loutish” behaviour – which included pulling her leggings and underwear down – caused the captain to divert the plane to Faro, Portugal, reported the Manchester Evening News.
She had drunk half a bottle of duty-free vodka before boarding, the court heard, and tried to drink the other half onboard before it was confiscated by cabin crew.
Allen, who was shouting and swearing, then “singled out” one cabin crew member before “pushing” her towards the aircraft door, leaving her fearful. The court heard that she was too “out of control” for restraint equipment to be used.
She was heard shouting: ”I have had my children taken off me so I will swear If I want to, you can’t f*****g stop me”. She also called a cabin crew member “a f*****g liar”.
Upon landing, she was taken off the plane by Portuguese authorities.
She pleaded guilty to being drunk onboard an aircraft as well as using threatening words of behaviour against a person, and was jailed for 15 months.
Amos Waldman, defending, said: “She accepts the facts of those offences and this one, and she tells me she’s ashamed she committed them.
“Nearly all of them involve alcohol. She has reduced her consumption since this incident and she has flown since this incident without any issues.”
Judge Hilary Manley, sentencing, said: “’Your drunken, loutish, self-indulgent behaviour caused unease and disruption to passengers and cost and disruption to the airline.
“For passengers to be trapped on a metal tube at 40,000 feet with a drunken thug is terrifying.”
It comes as the number of drunk and disruptive passengers arrested on planes at UK airports fell by 25 per cent last year, data from a Freedom of Information request revealed.
Some 87 travellers were arrested on planes from April 2018 to April 2019, compared to 117 during the same period the previous year.
At Gatwick and Glasgow airports, the number of arrests almost halved year-on-year.
The Independent has contacted Greater Manchester Police for comment.