Police board Manchester Airport flight to find man tied up with cable ties

A drunk tried to blame the cabin crew for serving him booze after he went berserk on a flight.

Abid Hussain, 49, necked four miniature bottles of whiskey on a flight from Dubai to Manchester. His loutish behaviour was so bad that staff restrained him using cable ties.

Manchester Crown Court heard that when police asked him to stop swearing Hussain told them he didn’t ‘give a f***’. He was locked up for his ‘atrocious’ actions.

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Prosecuting, Olivia Brooksbank-Laing said that police were told that there had been an issue on an Emirates flight from Dubai to Manchester, on January 20 last year. Hussain had to be restrained by staff on board the flight due to his behaviour.

For the last two hours of the flight, he had been abusive towards cabin crew and shouting and swearing. He had been pacing up and down the aisle and pushed staff, prosecutors said. When police arrived after the flight had landed in Manchester, officers found Hussain being held down by two members of staff, and he had been restrained using plastic zip ties.

When police asked him to stop swearing, he told them: “I don’t give a f***.” He continued to be abusive and claimed that he had been ‘sleeping with one of their wives for seven years’.

When questioned by police, Hussain said that he had been travelling alone from Pakistan. He had been an ‘alcoholic’ for four years, but had been sober for the last seven months, he said.

After becoming stressed from travelling he ordered miniature bottles of whiskey. Four miniature bottles had been served to him during the flight. He admitted that drinking alcohol can make him ‘violent’ and ‘aggressive’, and ‘prone to swearing’, and apologised to the officers.

But when he was quizzed by a probation officer, Hussain said that he shouldn’t have been served alcohol, and told how he was going to complain to the airline. “It seems to have elements of light to his character and elements of dark as well,” his defence barrister Martin Sharpe said.

He said that the ‘genesis’ of Hussain’s drinking was abuse he suffered as a child. “He is apologetic for his atrocious behaviour,” Mr Sharpe added.

“Even allowing for your addiction and your difficulties, you shouldn’t have taken the alcohol,” the judge, Recorder Gavin McBride told Hussain. Hussain, of New Augustus Road, Bradford, pleaded guilty to entering an aircraft while drunk and failing to surrender to court.

He was sentenced to 15 weeks in prison. Appearing in court by video link from prison, Hussain told the judge: “My apologies, I’m very ashamed sir.”