Air rage love rat is jailed over turning back holiday flight
A YOB who screamed at passengers and forced a holiday flight to Cyprus to divert back to Britain has been jailed for six months.
Jobless painter and decorator Joshua Strickland, 21, who was exposed as a love cheat on ITV’s The Jeremy Kyle Show, threatened an air hostess and had to be restrained by friends.
He targeted a Cypriot family on the Jet2 flight from Leeds Bradford airport, shouting at them to speak English.
Manchester Crown Court was told that Strickland’s behaviour had forced the plane to turn back over the North Sea and land in Manchester.
Strickland, from York, put his face close to an air stewardess and demanded, “I want a ******* drink” before turning on passengers saying, “Shut up or I will smack you.”
When the plane returned to the UK, Strickland was heard to say: “If they are doing this I might as well knock someone out.” Strickland had pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to being drunk on an aircraft.
Judge Elliott Knopf told him: “There is no question this must have been every passenger and crew’s nightmare. You were unpleasant and aggressive because of your obsession with the Cypriot family.
“It has been said on a number of occasions in recent years where people appear before court for sentences of this nature, they must expect condign punishment.
“Not just being punished for what they did, but so that the message goes out they will receive a strict sentence.”
Strickland appeared on Kyle’s show last year when his girlfriend had suspected him of going to a brothel in Leeds.
He had claimed he was playing pool while his friends romped with prostitutes but failed three lie detector tests.