A woman has been slapped with a $105000 (over Rs 70 lakh) bill for creating mayhem on a Turkey-bound flight from the United Kingdom. The Royal Air Force (RAF) was to scramble two fighter jets to intercept and bring back the plane due to what the British airliner Jet2 later described as 25-year-old Chloe Haines’ “catalog of aggressive, abusive and dangerous behavior,” including “attempting to open the aircraft doors.”
The bill was to cover “operating costs, airport charges and passenger welfare costs” after some passengers had to be put up in hotels, The Sun UK reported. Jet2 CEO Steve Heapy said the company will “vigorously pursue” the costs.
“Miss Haines’ behavior was one of the most serious cases of disruptive passenger behavior that we have experienced,” he said in a statement to the publication. Haines has been banned for life, he added.
“She must now face up to the consequences of her actions, and we will vigorously pursue to recover the costs that we incurred as a result of this divert, as we do with all disruptive passengers.”
Two RAF Typhoon fighters rushed to intercept the Airbus A321 on June 22 and guide it back to London Stansted Airport, where the woman was arrested after she was restrained aboard by fellow passengers.
Haines, a Costa Coffee worker who was traveling with her wheelchair-bound grandmother, caused a hijack scare when she tried to open an emergency exit door, The Sun reported. Steven Brown, 58, who restrained the woman, said she kicked, punched and screamed at the flight attendants.
“She was only petite but she had the strength of a fully grown man. The only time I’ve seen anything like that was when someone had just dropped acid, she had super strength,” he was quoted as saying by The Sun.
Another passenger, Amy Varol, said, “The woman was walking down the aisle when she literally ran to the exit door. She had her hands on the handle trying to open it. “Luckily there were two cabin crew who pulled her off the door. She started assaulting the two crew members, a woman and a man,” she added.
“A big guy then literally threw her down to the floor and there was one person holding one arm and another person holding the other,” she said. “Then a man sat on her and one person was holding her leg and someone else holding the other one.
“That’s when she started screaming, ‘Get off me, I’m going to kill everyone!’”
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