LONDON – Two brothers have been issued with a bill of more than £50,000 and have been banned for life from flying with Jet2 over violent behaviour that caused a plane to be diverted. Alfie and Kenneth Springthorpe displayed “unacceptable levels of aggression and even physical violence” on their holiday flight from London Stansted to Crete according to reports from multiple media outlets.

As a result, the crew was forced to head to Corfu so the pair, from Sidcup, Kent, could be offloaded. This resulted in a delay of approximately three hours and 45 minutes before the flight continued safely to Heraklion Airport.

Delay Causes Jet2 Crew to exceed operating hours

Following the delay, the aircrew ran out of operating hours meaning that they were unable to operate the return flight from Crete. This forced Jet2 to provide overnight hotel accommodation, transport to and from Heraklion Airport, as well as food and drink, for more than 200 people.

Jet2.com added that as well as fully supporting the authorities with any subsequent investigation, the airline will now vigorously pursue the costs incurred by this divert.

Phil Ward, Managing director of Jet2.com commented saying: “The deplorable behaviour of these two passengers left our highly trained crew with no choice but to divert the aircraft to the nearest airport so that the police could offload them. This means that their actions directly impacted customers looking forward to enjoying their well-deserved holidays in Crete, as well as customers and crew who then had to stay in a hotel for an unwanted extra night.”

“It is completely unacceptable that the pair caused such disruption for so many people and they must now face the consequences of their actions. As a family-friendly airline, we take a zero-tolerance approach to such behaviour and we have a successful track record when it comes to pursuing and recovering any losses that we incur. We would of course also like to apologise to everyone impacted by this behaviour, which is thankfully very rare.”

Air Rage Incidents Also A Major Problem In The U.S

Assaults on crew members, public intoxication and verbal abuse. These are the top 3 passenger offences in the U.S. Last year was the worst on record for unruly airplane passenger behaviour in the United States, according to Federal Aviation Administration data. A whopping 5,981 reports of unruly passengers were logged by the FAA as of December 31. Of those, 4,290 — nearly 72% — were a mask and COVID related incidents.

Back in January of this year, it officially marked one year since the FAA announced a “zero-tolerance” policy for unruly passenger behaviour that skips warnings or counselling and goes directly to penalties, which can include heavy fines and jail time.

The policy, spurred by incidents tied to masks and violence at the US Capitol, was originally set to expire at the end of March 2021. It was extended at least until the federal mask mandate is lifted. The unruly passenger incident rate has dropped approximately 50% since record highs in early 2021, the FAA notes on the page where it tracks incidents, “but there remains more work to do.”