A man has been jailed for 16 months and banned from Gatwick airport for calling in a hoax bomb threat to a flight he was running late for.
Rashidul Islam, 32, had been due to catch a 5.40pm flight from Gatwick on 4 May last year, to visit his fiancee in Marrakech.
He thought he had left himself plenty of time to get there by public transport from his home in Cricklewood, north London, but his train unexpectedly terminated at St Pancras in north London – more than 25 miles from the Sussex airport.
He hailed a cab, but as it crawled through the London city traffic he panicked that he would miss the flight and used his mobile to dial 999.
“EasyJet flight 8897 leaves in 40 minutes,” Islam told the call handler. “There may be a bomb on the plane, you need to delay it, you need to stop it now.”
Airport security evacuated the aircraft and its 147 passengers were held in the gate room. As they were waiting, Islam turned up at Gatwick’s north terminal to check in, late.
According to police, this was when inquiries revealed that Islam’s mobile phone number was the same as the number used to call in the warning. Officers were called and they arrested him on suspicion of making a bomb hoax.
Islam admitted his scheme in a police interview, explaining that he had panicked because he could not afford another ticket if he missed the plane. Meanwhile, passengers and their luggage were re-screened and their flight finally took off at 8.54pm – three hours later than scheduled.
At Lewes crown court on Friday, Islam was sentenced to 16 months in prison, after pleading guilty to communicating false information at an earlier hearing.
Detective Constable Stephen Trott, who handled the case for Sussex police, said: “While the defendant expressed remorse, there is no excuse for his actions that day and he has been sentenced accordingly.
“Making a false report of a bomb on a plane not only causes significant costs and delays to the airport and its passengers, it also strikes fear into the community.
“We treat all reports of this nature extremely seriously, and anyone caught committing such an offence will be dealt with robustly.”
Since the incident, Islam has also been sentenced to 42 months in prison for unconnected money laundering offences.