Airplane passenger fined for urinating in a cup and then spilling it on a flight attendant, says report

07.04.2024 - 10:35 / insider.com

A passenger aboard a New Zealand Air flight from Auckland to Sydney has been fined for urinating into a cup during a delay in deplaning.

The incident occurred in December but only recently became public knowledge after Stuff, a New Zealand news website, reported that a passenger in the same row, identified as Holly, said she had reported the behavior to the flight attendants.

Officials told Stuff on Friday that a Sydney court had fined a 53-year-old man 600 Australian dollars ($395) for the offensive behavior.

It was the latest episode of a growing trend in bad behavior on planes.

Holly and her 15-year-old daughter had been sitting in the aisle and middle seats when the unidentified man, sat in the window seat, began urinating into a cup.

Upon landing, the flight spent around 20 minutes waiting on the tarmac to be assigned a gate.

Holly told Stuff: "There was no mistaking what the sound was, and I just looked straight at my daughter, and my daughter looked straight at me. He pulled his naked penis out next to us at least three times."

She and her daughter then went to the back of the plane to inform the flight attendant what was going on, Stuff reports.

The man followed them, supposedly to dispose of the urine down the toilet, said Holly, who believed he had had too much alcohol.

But "as he was walking, he was obviously quite drunk by this point; he spilled a good amount of his urine onto the flight attendant at the end of the plane as well because he tripped," she said.

Related stories

After the incident, the plane was further delayed to wait for Australian Federal police to arrive.

The police escorted the man off the plane, as well as Holly and her daughter. "We were humiliated," Holly said.

According to a Business Insider report in December incidents of unruly and anti-social behavior on planes are trending upward.

Globally, there was one report of a passenger incident per 568 flights in 2022, up from one per 835 flights in 2021, according to the most recent data released by the International Air Transport Association.

Aviation security expert Jeffrey Price told BI's Natalie Musumeci that the "stress of air travel," grueling flight delays "where passengers aren't being consistently informed about what's happening," not having enough leg room in airplane seats, travelers reclining their seats all the way back, and "in some cases, arbitrary rules invented by crew members" can all "contribute to the problem."

On Sunday, in another report of unruly behavior, a man aboard a KM Malta Airlines flight from Berlin to Malta urinated on the floor of the plane after ignoring the cabin crew's orders to wait until the seatbelt had been switched off to go to the toilet.

Andreas Heize, 49, was arrested when the