£10,000 fine for ‘I want to crash’ jet drunk
A PASSENGER flying first class from Barbados stood up and screamed: “I hope this plane crashes and we all die,” a court heard yesterday.
Drunk Rachel Street, 41, had to be restrained on the Virgin flight to Heathrow on January 5 as she launched a tirade of abuse at passengers and grabbed one of the cabin crew.
Street, a self-employed production assistant, admitted several charges at an earlier hearing and was spared prison.
Instead she was given a 12-week jail sentence for assault suspended for 18 months.
Street will also have a curfew for six months and has to pay £10,000 for being drunk on the aircraft, plus £1,223 in compensation and costs.
Street, from Streatham, south London, paid before she left Uxbridge Magistrates Court in west London.
District Judge Deborah Wright told her: “You were in a situation where effectively everybody was unable to escape.
“You behaved with a sense of complete entitlement and you exhibited absolutely no understanding of the stress that you must have [caused] while you were travelling 38,000 to 40,000ft above the ground. Your behaviour was utterly appalling.”
The court heard Street was under a “significant amount of stress” at the time.The earlier hearing was told that she had been served four drinks on the flight then cabin crew told her she would not get any more.
A flight restraint kit had to be opened after she started hurling abuse at them.
They then stationed themselves around her for the rest of the flight to “protect the other passengers and cabin crew”.