Simone Burns began her racist rant when the crew refused to serve her a fourth bottle

MUMBAI: An inebriated Irish lawyer who spat on an Air India cabin crew member and racially abused her and others onboard a Mumbai-London flight four months ago was convicted of assault by a UK court on Wednesday.

Simone Burns, known as Simone O'Broin, was served three bottles of wine with breakfast soon after the November 11 flight, AI-131, took off. She began her racist rant when the crew refused to serve her a fourth bottle. Thereafter, for a long period during the flight, she hurled racial abuses at the crew and at one point, spat on a crew member, swore at her and violently squeezed her arm.

TOI was the first to write about the incident in a report carried on November 14, along with a video clip of the abuse the crew suffered at the hands of the unruly passenger.

According to UK media reports, Burns was arrested after the plane landed at Heathrow Airport . In February, she was charged with "behaving in a threatening, abusive, insulting or disorderly manner towards a member of aircraft crew" as well as assaulting the aircraft crew and being drunk on an aircraft. Burns pleaded guilty to assault and being inebriated onboard the flight. The Uxbridge Magistrates' Court ruled that her assault and abuse was too severe for them to sentence, and passed her case to Isleworth Crown Court, where she will be sentenced on April 4.

An AI official, requesting anonymity, said: "This will become a landmark case for unruly passengers in the future." In 2009, Kingfisher Airlines had taken Clare Irby, the then 30-year-old Guinness brewery heiress to a UK court over unruly behavior. There was evidence that she was drunk for four out of 11 hours of flight, but since it couldn't be established that the abuse took place when the aircraft was over UK airspace, she walked free.



In Video: On cam: Unruly foreign passenger abuses AI flight attendants after being denied another glass of wine