AIRWATCH DATA

11 Jun 2010

(MORE ONLINE)

SABATAGE & ATTACKS

31 MARCH     CALABAR, NIGERIA

A taxi driver forced his Audi through a perimeter access gate and onto the manoeuvring area at Margaret Ekpo Airport, before crashing it into the undercarriage of an Arik Airlines aircraft. The driver later claimed that his mission was to blow up the plane because Nigerians are unrepentant sinners and that Jesus Christ is the redeemer.

23 MAY         MODESTO

Sydnee Alyster crashed through a fence into the airport, colliding with a Piper Maui outside the SkyTrek airplane hangar. A Piper Malibu was also damaged. Alyster then left her car at Hertz rent-a-car, seemingly not realising the damage she had caused.

UNRULY PASSENGERS

26 MARCH     BELFAST

An intoxicated man became disruptive on a Continental Airlines flight from Newark and ended up being restrained mid-flight by Terry Spence, the Chairman of the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s Police Federation, who intervened when the man allegedly became aggressive and violent towards passengers and crew.

2 APRIL         LONDON

Susan Boyle, the British talent show star, lost her temper with her assistant at London Heathrow when her private jet was delayed for two hours. She was in transit from Tokyo to Edinburgh.

4 APRIL         ANCHORAGE

John Leigh, 56, a well-respected conservation officer at the International Tropical Timber Organisation in Yokohama who was organising a major international conference on biodiversity, threatening to attack an American Airlines pilot on a flight from Los Angeles to Tokyo. Leigh had downed six drinks and started swearing at cabin crew when they refused to give him more alcohol. The flight diverted to Anchorage.

6 APRIL         SALT LAKE CITY

Aboubacar Soumah, 39, was arrested for allegedly inappropriately touching a teenage girl on a Delta flight from Atlanta to Salt Lake City. The girl had reported the behaviour to the flight attendant, who later confirmed that Soumah had touched the girl and asked her for sexual favours.

14 APRIL       GOOSE BAY, CANADA

A Delta flight, en route from Moscow Sheremetyevo to New York, diverted to Goose Bay because an intoxicated female Russian passenger, Irina Shevchenko, became disruptive when crew attempted to prevent her from consuming her duty free alcohol in an aircraft toilet.

15 APRIL       SYDNEY

Kelly Rowland, of pop group Destiny’s Child, allegedly lost her temper with Qantas cabin crew when they landed in Sydney, accusing them of being rude and treating her entourage like children.

27 APRIL       BANGOR

A Delta flight, en route from Paris to Atlanta, diverted due to an unruly passenger incident allegedly perpetrated by Derek Stansberry, 26. Stansberry, a former air commando and war veteran, claimed he was holding a forged passport and that he had dynamite in his boots and in his laptop computer.

6 MAY           INDIANAPOLIS

Laura Huser, 51, was taken off a flight by three officers as she was drunk and kept interrupting pre-flight safety instructions on her Southwest flight set to depart for Denver.

14 MAY         NEW YORK

Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who plays Henry VIII in The Tudors, was denied boarding a 7am flight to Los Angeles as he was deemed to be too drunk to fly. He had previously been involved in incidents in Dublin and Paris airports.

23 MAY         LONDON

Bee Gee singer Robin Gibb, 60, became extremely abusive to staff at Heathrow when asked to submit to extra security checks before he boarded a flight to Los Angeles. He left the airport and opted to fly on a different day.

JUDGEMENT & ARREST

3 MAY           NEW YORK

Faisal Shahzad, 30, was arrested on board an Emirates aircraft as it prepared to depart New York Kennedy for Dubai. Shahzad is allegedly behind the attempted Times Square bombing. He was brought to court on five counts, including attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to kill and maim citizens.

10 MAY         KARACHI

Faiz Mohammad, 30, was arrested as he tried to board a Thai International Airlines flight to Muscat with electrical wiring, two batteries and a switch in his shoes.

21 MAY         MADRID

ETA members Igor Portu, Martin Sarasola and Mikel San Sebastian were found guilty of two murders, 48 attempted murders and terrorist damage, and were sentenced to a total of 1,040 years each for their placing a car bomb at Madrid Barajas Airport in 2006 that killed two Ecuadorian nationals. The men will also each have to pay compensation of €1.2 million to the families of the two Ecuadorians.
INCIDENT

3 APRIL         LIVERPOOL

Two German women were arrested after they tried to take the body of a dead relative on board a flight to Berlin. Staff became suspicious when they tried to check in 91-year-old Curt Willi Jarant, who was wearing sunglasses. The women, his widow and step-daughter, said they thought he was asleep. They ‘three’ had arrived at the airport in a taxi. A post mortem later revealed that the man had been dead for at least 12 hours.

5 APRIL         MUMBAI

Police arrested four men for stealing airline fuel from Sahar airport through a web of underground pipes. They found that the main pipeline carrying Aviation Turbine Fuel from BPCL depots in east Mumbai to the international airport was connected at various points to an illegal underground pipe. This pipe led directly to an extraction centre in Kurla, from where the thieves had been running the operation for three months during which they had pumped out nearly three tankers of fuel every day. The scheme was uncovered when Chandrakant Eknath Bhosle, a 52-year old security guard, noticed a strong smell of kerosene during his night patrol.

4 MAY           MIAMI

Rolando Negrin, an airport security guard, allegedly battered a colleague, Hugo Osorno, who ridiculed him about the size of his manhood after he walked through a hi-tech body scanner.

5 MAY           BAGHDAD

Around 200 Iraqi Airways employees demonstrated at Baghdad International Airport. Iraqi Airways’ chief executive Kifah Hassan Jabbar had his passport seized and the plane he arrived on impounded at London’s Gatwick Airport 2 May, after its first commercial flight from Baghdad to London in 20 years, as a result of a dispute with Kuwait Airways in which they claim that Iraqi Airways owes it $1.2 billion, a dispute dating back to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

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