Lawyer jailed for spitting and racist rant at flight attendant
A LAWYER who spat at a flight attendant during a foul-mouthed tirade after she was refused alcohol on a nine-hour business class flight has been jailed for six months.
Judge Nicholas Wood, sentencing at Isleworth Crown Court, told Simone Burns: “Spitting straight into a crew member’s face at close range is a particularly insulting and upsetting act”.
Burns, of Hove, was sentenced to six months for being drunk on an aircraft and two months for assault. The sentences are to be served concurrently after she previously pleaded guilty to the charges.
Burns, 50, who is known as Simone O’broin, was initially served three bottles of red wine but declared “I’m a f----international lawyer” when she was denied more on an Air India flight from Mumbai to London on Nov 11 2018.
The lawyer, who is Irish and has worked with refugees around the world, unleashed a barrage of abuse in a prolonged rant which also saw her spit and grab the arm of the steward, the court heard.
Burns was also ordered to pay £300 compensation to the crew member who was assaulted.
The court was told that this crew member later said: “In the 34 years I have worked for Air India this is the first time I have been treated like this by a woman. I felt abused.”
The judge said he was satisfied the offence was racially aggravated and that the Air India passengers must have been “extremely upset” by Burns’s behaviour and the language she used.
Mark Kimsey, defending, suggested that her actions were due to a “mixture of altitude, the consumption of drink and anxiety” at the fact that she was likely to miss the funeral of an uncle.
Burns was diagnosed with facial skin cancer in 2000 and has had multiple biopsies and surgeries to what is “an active problem”, according to Mr Kimsey. He added she is waiting to get a prosthetic nose.