Drunk Flight Passenger Tried Opening Aircraft Door, Entering Cockpit Mid-Flight, Abused Crew

A drunk Thomas Cook flight passenger who abused cabin crew members and co-passengers before trying to open the plane’s door was jailed Tuesday.

Lynton Bryan, 34, from Oldham, England, was handed his prison sentence at the Manchester Crown Court for his unruly behavior during a flight from the Manchester airport to Antalya, Turkey, on June 14, 2018. Bryan’s behavior gradually worsened during the four-hour-long flight, which was already delayed for three hours prior to take-off, the Daily Mail reported.

The court heard that the defendant got out of his seat as the plane was about to take off, claiming he had to take out a sweet from the overhead bin for a child, and refused to sit down for the rest of the journey. Despite being warned several times, he continued to scare both the flight attendants as well as his co-passengers by following them around the aircraft, all the while making rude gestures and yelling at them.

He also accused the staff of being racist, before targeting one female crew member and harassing her for the entirety of the flight. He violently threatened her claiming he was “a bad boy from Manchester” who “will hunt you down and when I do, I will hurt you.”

At some point during the journey, Bryan also tried to force his way into the cockpit and aggressively tried to open the main exit of the aircraft. Even when the plane was about to land at the Antalya airport, the defendant refused to sit down on his seat. He was arrested by airport security.

While some reports said he was jailed for 18 months, other outlets reported that he was given a 22-month prison term.

“Bryan frightened not only the cabin crew who were simply doing their job and [were] there to keep the rest of the passengers safe, but also frightened the holiday-goers who should have been excited at the start of their trip. With the amount of witness accounts we were able to put to him in interview, he had little room to deny his vicious and repulsive actions,” Detective Constable Brad Howarth with the Greater Manchester Police, who was one of the investigators in the case, said.

He added: “In a job like ours, you come across people who behave like Bryan on the street all too often but the way the crew dealt with him in the air and in the confines of a plane, while avoiding any physical harm coming to themselves or their passengers is truly commendable. However oblivious he seemed to be to the fright and alarm he was causing people on that flight, he now has time to think about that and nothing else as he remains firmly grounded…”