Young mother sentenced for tackling pilot to floor of cockpit

A 23-year-old mother has been convicted of assault after she tackled an airline captain to the floor at the end of a flight.

Henrietta Mitaire was accused of pushing, scratching and kicking Captain Guido Keel after she was not allowed to store her child’s pushchair in the cabin during the flight.

The incident happened after the plane arrived at Heathrow Airport from Zurich in May last year.

Mitaire’s mother, Mary Roberts, 53, was also accused of assault after she tried to intervene but was acquitted.

Uxbridge Magistrates’ Court heard Mitaire had asked a flight attendant before the plane took off if she could put her child’s buggy in the cabin rather than the aircraft’s hold, claiming it was “too expensive” to pay for hold luggage.

She had then argued with two members of airport staff before her mother stepped in to calm her down.

After the flight landed at Heathrow, Mitaire approached the same member of staff and asked for the names of the Swiss airport workers to make a complaint.

Cabin manager Ali Chkerdaa said Mitaire had told him that “Swiss people are racist” because she was a black woman travelling with a child.

Captain Keel then intervened, touching Mitaire on the shoulder and asking her to leave the flight.

The court heard the young mother grabbed him by the arm and followed him into the cockpit as he tried to walk away.

She ended up on top of him as her mother joined them in the cockpit, where Roberts was heard shouting “get off my daughter”.

Capt Keel received scratches on his face and arm and a bite on his upper arm.

Mitaire denied assault by beating and said she had been acting in self-defence.

The young mother, who declined to give live evidence to the trial, said the captain had “forcefully” made contact to her shoulder and was “pulling my hair and dragging me to the ground”.

“I ended up on the floor with him kneeling on top of me with his full weight,” she said, adding that she could not breathe properly.

She continued: “In a desperate attempt to relieve the pressure so I could breathe, I used my teeth to try and get him off me.”

Roberts denied the same charges, saying she had feared for her daughter’s life.

The court also heard the assault had caused the following flight to be cancelled.

After Mitaire was convicted, district judge Deborah Wright said Capt Keel had been “trying to protect himself from a very loud and very angry woman who had refused to leave the plane”.

The judge went on: “She was shouting, recording him and seemed intent upon pursuing him.

“There is nothing in the recordings I have seen that the captain reacted in any way other than as a professional.”

Mitaire was handed a four-month sentence suspended for one year.

She was also ordered to pay £1,500 in court costs, a £115 surcharge and £1,000 compensation to Capt Keel – totalling £2,615 – immediately, or serve three months in prison.

Mitaire, of Queen’s Gate Place in South Kensington, was also ordered to comply with a tagged curfew at her home address between 7pm and 7am for six months.

The judge added she had taken into account that Mitaire had “some vulnerabilities”.

(c) Sky News 2020: Young mother sentenced for tackling pilot to floor of cockpit