UK pilot sacked over bomb scare row

LONDON, England -- A British Airways pilot sacked from his £120,000 ($180,000) a year job for shouting at a passenger who sparked a bomb scare has claimed she was looking for a seating upgrade.

Captain Stuart Clapson, 53, stormed from his cockpit to confront the 59-year-old married woman after she claimed a Chinese passenger was carrying a bomb, an employment tribunal at Croydon, south London heard.

The 747 jet was within minutes of taking off for Barbados from Gatwick Airport in England on October 26, 1999.

Clapson from East Molesey, Surrey, who is claiming unfair dismissal, told the first day of the hearing on Monday: "I still have a gut feeling she was after an upgrade. It's my opinion that in order to save time a cabin services director will give someone an upgrade."

British Airways said his treatment of the passenger, which included calling her a "stupid woman" over the public announcement system, was "totally remiss".

Cabin crew described how, after being informed of the woman's allegations, Clapson made a loud speaker announcement saying: "A stupid lady is spoiling all your holidays.

"I'm going to get her off the aircraft and get the police who are going to arrest her and put her in jail."

The cabin crew said that after aborting the flight and taxi-ing the plane back to its stand, Clapson emerged from his cockpit without his hat and tie looking "angry and agitated" and shouting "Where is she, where is she?"

He was then said to have gone to seat 21C and shouted at the woman, pointing his finger within inches of her face and reducing her to tears.

Clapson said: "Something had to be said quickly. Gatwick only has one runway. There was an aircraft three miles from touchdown, approximately one and a half minutes and we were in its way and we had to get down the runway and get off it quickly.

"We were carrying an aircraft weighing 330 or 340 tons, about 100 yards while an aeroplane flying at 180mph was one and a half minutes from touching down. I had to say something and I had to try and tell the other 300 people that the captain wasn't worried about what was going on."

He denied that he was venting his frustration after his wife Jackie and five-year-old son, who were going on holiday to Barbados, were given an economy class seat on the flight.

A box belonging to the Chinese passenger, in which the woman claimed there was a bomb, turned out to contain a heater.

The woman was removed from the plane and put up at an hotel for the night by BA and put on a flight to Barbados the next day.

Captain David Fleming, who conducted the final BA appeal before Clapson's dismissal, said he had shown a "gross error of judgment and a complete loss of temper and control" in dealing with a "highly stressed" passenger on the 747-400 plane.

Tribunal chairman Ian MacInnes said he was "quite surprised" at the contrast between BA's treatment of the passenger and the pilot.

"She delays the plane and falsely accuses someone of having a bomb, which has an element of racial abuse in that he was a Chinese man.

"She gets put up in a hotel and flown out the next day and the captain gets sacked. Isn't that rather a perverse situation ?"

Avoiding 'sky' rage
May 7, 1998
Air rage: Rare but rising
December 21, 1999
'Air rage' leads to removal of airline passengers
February 1, 1999

British Airways
Gatwick Airport
Air Rage

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.