A ghost hunter who abused, demeaned and threatened Virgin airline workers over the phone has used medical complications associated with his obesity to avoid jail.

But paranormal investigator Kade Jones has form on the phone, so the judge who spared him warned if he ever did it again he would be put behind bars — no matter what his weight.

Jones, 49, said he was in too much pain to stand in the court to plead guilty to two counts of using a carriage service to harass.

“I’m sorry, I’m in a lot of pain,” he told the Brisbane District Court today.

He was there because he abused and threatened staff at the airline in June 2017, leaving them feeling scared, belittled, upset and degraded.

The court was told Jones, who refused to identify himself on the calls, threatened staff with legal action, made racial slurs and refused to believe he was talking to someone based in Brisbane.

“Ma’am, don’t tell me in that Filipino lingo of yours, the thing is, let me tell you what the thing is, I’ve got my legal team here, I’ve got the police on the way,” Jones told customer service staff, the court heard.

“So you may need to get off that little Filipino backside of yours and you may want to get onto your Australian head office.

“And they want to go into crash control because voice recordings of you and your Filipino staff abusing me and swearing at me are about to be handed to the Australian Federal Police.”

The court was told Jones had already been placed on a watch list with the airline, which banned him from flying with them in 2010 after he made a number of calls to the company.

Jones also had been convicted of similar offences on three other occasions dating back to 1998.

During those incidents he told public servants they were “going to hell” and threatened to “break kneecaps”.

In his sentencing submissions, Jones’s barrister Rob Glenday said prison would be too difficult for his client due to his complicated obesity. He said Jones suffered a serious back injury in 2004.

He submitted medical documents that said Jones needed to lose weight to get below 250kg before he could have an operation to assist with medical conditions. In sentencing, Judge Vicki Loury slammed Jones’s actions as offensive, threatening and racist.

She said Jones had shown no contrition and provided no explanation for abusing the airline staff.

She sentenced him to 12 months’ prison, but then ordered he be released on a $2000 good behaviour recognisance for five years.

Judge Loury said if he harassed people over the phone again he would be sent behind bars regardless of his weight.