Two brothers have been hit with a £50,000 bill and a lifetime ban from flying with Jet2 after their violent behaviour caused a flight 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. Because of their actions, the crew had no choice but to divert the plane to Corfu so the brothers, from Kent, could be offloaded.
Other passengers experienced a delay of almost four hours before the flight continued safely to Heraklion Airport, Essex Live reports. Because of the huge delay the air crew ran out of operating hours meaning that they were unable to operate the return flight from Crete.
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This meant 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 said it will now vigorously pursue the costs incurred by the diversion.
Managing director Phil Ward said: “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. Now that international travel has reopened properly, we hope this acts as a timely reminder that acting in a disruptive fashion can well lead to very serious consequences.”
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