A nightmare passenger who screamed in the face of a mortified air hostess and reportedly slapped a fellow passenger now faces a lifetime ban along with a substantial fine.
Catherine Bush 'displayed a catalogue of aggressive, abusive and dangerous behaviour' which included 'physical aggression towards other customer and our crew' said Jet2 on the incident. This comes after footage of the irate woman, who is thought to be from Kirklees in West Yorkshire, went viral while she was thrown off the flight from Manchester to Antalya, Turkey The Mirror reports.
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She has also been fined £5,000 for her abusive tirade, filmed by shocked passengers on Monday morning. Bush was recorded screaming and marching up and down a flight which had to be diverted to Vienna just over two hours after leaving the UK.
The diversion, brought on by her foul-mouthed rants, resulted in a delay of over an hour.
Phil Ward, managing director of Jet2.com, said: "Ms Bush displayed a continued pattern of appalling behaviour on the flight and she must now face up to the consequences of her actions. We have always made it abundantly clear that, as a family friendly airline, we take a zero-tolerance approach to such behaviour and that we will vigorously pursue any costs incurred as a result of such an incident.
"Although such incidents are very rare, it is unacceptable that our customers and crew should have to experience it. We would like to apologise to anyone who had to experience this behaviour and we would like to commend our highly-trained crew for their exceptional handling of this difficult situation."
The airline says it will fully support the authorities with any subsequent investigation. In the video, the woman is seen screaming in the face of a uniformed staff member at the front of the plane.
As other flight staff gather around her to aid their colleague, it looks as though she lashes out with her hands against someone seated in the first row.
A member of staff can be seen telling her to 'stand back', to which she replies: "I am back. Sort your head out you." The airline worker says: "You are not doing yourself any favours."
She replies: "You're not doing yourself any favours either. So what have I done? Don't touch me, don't ****ing touch me." She adds: "What have I done? What have I done wrong on this flight, eh? See, you haven't got an answer."
Another passenger, who asked only to be named by her first name, Emma, told The Mirror it was about 40 minutes into the flight when the disruption started.
She said: "The flight attendant was trying to calm her down.
"She was being really loud and arguing with the passenger in front of her. That went on for about 40 minutes.
"They gave her notice that any more trouble and further action would be taken and were telling her 'we're not here to be horrible to anybody.'
"She was not having any of it. She was aggressive and swearing, it was not a nice experience -you didn't dare look at her.
"At one point I walked down the aisle to go to the toilet with my little girl and she said 'what the f*** are you looking at? Go on, have a f***ing look all of you.'"
