Jailed, mum and daughter who got so drunk their f light had to be aborted
A MOTHER and daughter were jailed yesterday after their drunken antics forced a jet takeoff to be aborted.
Kelly Meadowcroft, 38, and Kodie Richardson, 20, became so unruly after downing duty-free gin that they reduced cabin crew and fellow passengers to tears.
The captain of the Thomas Cook flight to Turkey was forced to turn the taxiing aircraft back to the terminal.
As officers escorted the pair off the airliner at Manchester airport, a handcuffed Richardson was captured on body - cam footage screaming: ‘I have done nothing wrong and I am not getting off this plane.
‘I’m going away to have a good time and you have come here to ruin it. I’ve paid for my flight and I’m not getting off.’ While detained in a police vehicle, Richardson began rattling the cage and making vile threats to a female officer.
In a probation report the women claimed they only got drunk because they had to buy a dutyfree bottle of spirits as rounds in the departure lounge bar were ‘too expensive’. Both admitted being drunk in an aircraft and Richardson also admitted assault and racially aggravated harassment.
Richardson sobbed in the dock at Manchester’s Minshull Street Crown Court yesterday as she was ordered to serve ten months in a young offenders’ institution.
Her mother was jailed for two months for her drunken behaviour. Sentencing the ‘selfish’ pair, from Wythenshawe, Manchester, Judge Mark Savill said the ‘disgraceful incident’ had been a ‘prolonged antisocial and obnoxious piece of behaviour’. He added: ‘Members of the public look forward to their hard- earned holidays and you ruined them before they started.’
The incident happened in September last year. Richardson had booked the trip following the deaths of her father and grandfather. As the flight prepared for take-off, the mother and daughter were seen drinking from a bottle, asking for cigarettes, disrupting the safety briefing and talking about knocking a crew member out. A stewardess was told: ‘Look at you in your scarf and your perfect life.’
Prosecutor Haseeb Yousaf said Richardson ‘appeared red in the face, eyes glazed, shouting at the top of her voice’, adding that her mother ‘struggled to put a sentence together’.
A six-year-old girl sitting in front of Richardson was in tears. Richardson had booked the holiday with friends who then dropped out because they ‘didn’t want any trouble’, the court heard.
Huw Edwards, defending Richardson, said she suffered from anxiety and depression and hadn’t flown for a number of years. ‘That meant she was drinking even more than she normally drank,’ he added. For Meadowcroft, Toby Wilbraham said she had been ‘drunk and obnoxious... arguing with her daughter to calm down’.