Etihad bomb hoax passenger jailed for 3 years
09.04.11
A man has been jailed for three years after admitting a bomb hoax on an Etihad Airways flight heading from Abu Dhabi to Heathrow on 24 January. James Glen, 38, had admitted communicating information about a bomb hoax at Chelmsford Crown Court.
Mr Glen, who was drunk, told a recently qualified flight attendant a passenger had a gun and had threatened to blow himself up on the day that 35 people died in a suicide bomb attack at Moscow's busiest airport. The plane, which was carrying 163 passengers and 15 crew, was redirected to Stansted Airport under RAF fighter escort.
Duncan Penny, representing Mr Glen, said his client had a history of depression and had consumed alcohol and taken an anti-histamine drug. He had been living in Australia for 18 years and was returning to the UK to start a job working on rally cars in Chard, Somerset. It was his first flight in 20 years, and he had expressed a fear of flying and was tired.
After the hearing, chief inspector Graham Stubbs said: ‘Although this was probably a one-off act of drunken stupidity, Mr Glen's actions caused a large number of people a great deal of anxiety and inconvenience, as well as wasting a considerable amount of public and private money.'
‘I now hope that anyone who thinks about making a joke around issues of security within the aviation arena reflects carefully upon the fate of Mr Glen, before doing something they subsequently regret.’
To book a stansted airport hotel or stansted airport car park at the lowest price, click on these links to two great stansted airport car parking and stansted airport hotel price comparison pages.
