Pair jailed for drunken antics on holiday flight
Two strangers whose drunken antics forced a holiday jet to make an emergency landing before even leaving the UK were given jail terms yesterday.
Derek Root, 30, downed ten shots of Jack Daniel’s whiskey in the departure lounge after his flight from Glasgow to Alicante was delayed by three hours.
When he finally boarded, a passenger sitting nearby, Alexander Gray, 38, handed him a bottle of Jagermeister which he also started drinking. The pair soon became abusive to passengers and crew, before Gray was sick on the floor.
They were subdued by staff and returned to their seats – where they both promptly fell fast asleep as the plane diverted to Bristol Airport.
Police came on to the plane, where it proved “very difficult to rouse” the pair and arrest them, Bristol Crown Court heard yesterday.
Root, of Nisket Court, Glasgow, was jailed for eight months and Gray, of Moss Vale Road, Edinburgh, was given a six-month suspended prison sentence after both admitted being drunk on an aircraft and being abusive to staff. Judge Michael Cullum told the pair: “You were both completely drunk and must have known you were getting drunk, drinking whiskey after whiskey, pint after pint.
“What you did was absolutely abhorrent.”
The court heard how Root, a refuse collector, and Gray, a hospital porter, had never met before the Thomson flight on 8 July this year.
Root was going on holiday for a week with his girlfriend and had only been on a plane once before.
They were due to depart at 7am but the plane did not leave until 10am, by which time both men were drunk.
They found themselves sitting near each other and it was the first time they had met.