A man has appeared in court charged with multiple assaults on board a Jet2 flight from Edinburgh to Cyprus that was forced to turn back mid-air.
Gerard Buist, 32, appeared at Edinburgh Sheriff Court on Thursday, September 24. Buist, from Glasgow, was charged with three counts of assault and one count of assault to injury.
He was also charged with two counts of threatening and abusive behaviour and one count of acting in a disruptive manner on an aircraft.
Bail granted and case committed
Buist made no plea and was granted bail while the case was committed for further examination. He will be expected to reappear in court within the next eight days.
The Jet2 flight LS721 to Larnaca headed back to Scotland around 30 minutes after departing as a result of the incident on board the aircraft on Wednesday, September 23.
Emergency response at Edinburgh Airport
Emergency services met the flight after it landed safely back in the capital. The passenger was then huckled off the aircraft upon landing by a number of police officers.
Videos taken from inside the aircraft show emergency services responding to the incident after the plane was back on the ground at Edinburgh Airport. Fire crews and airport staff can be seen on the ground before several police officers make their way down the stairs carrying a person off the flight and into a van.
Flight tracking and airline response
Data from flight tracking app FlightRadar24 shows how the Boeing 737 took off from Edinburgh before turning south on its way to Cyprus. The aircraft had barely crossed the border into English airspace before it turned around in the skies near Newcastle.
Jet2 has apologised to customers for the disruption to their flight and said they take a "zero-tolerance approach" to disruptive passenger behaviour.
A spokesperson for Jet2.com said: “As a family-friendly airline, we take a zero-tolerance approach to disruptive passenger behaviour, and we strongly condemn any behaviour of this nature. We will not hesitate to take appropriate action against disruptive passengers, including through the courts where necessary, and we will seek to recover the costs incurred as a result of their behaviour.
“We would like to apologise to all customers and our colleagues onboard who had to experience this.”
