Man jailed over Heathrow bomb scare
05.04.11
A man who was dragged from an aircraft at Heathrow last year after shouting ‘there is a bomb on this plane’ was given a four-month jail sentence at Southwark Crown Court. Ronald Fowles, 59, of Edred Road, Dover, who admitted being drunk on an aircraft, had been due to fly to Dubai to smuggle cigarettes back to the UK last January. The incident, which happened as the plane was taxiing on the runway, is said to have cost the airline, Emirates, more than £40,000.
Mr Fowles had been drinking heavily before he boarded the flight at Heathrow Airport in January 2010, the court heard. He sparked a major security alert by telling passengers ‘there is a bomb on this plane’ and ‘we are going to blow up’. The scare came shortly after Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to detonate a device stitched into his underwear on a flight from Amsterdam as it landed in the US on Christmas Day 2009.
The court heard that Fowles, a former Army officer, had opted to ‘self-medicate’ ahead of his flight with a bottle of vodka. As he was removed from the by plane by armed police he shouted: ‘I'll kill you, I'll kill you.’ He also informed passengers around him: ‘To blow up a plane all you need is two bags of sugar and some water.’
Over 330 passengers had to leave the plane, which was held overnight while precautionary searches were made. Judge Nicholas Loraine-Smith told Fowles his ‘rambling must have terrified some of the other passengers.’ He was not imprisoned as he had already served seven days in custody and 220 days on curfew. The authorities dropped another charge of making a bomb threat.
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