Houshang Jafari, 58, has received a one-year jail sentence for a novel crime: grabbing a skid bar on a helicopter about to take off.
Jafari was mad when the helicopter landed near his flat in Bristol – resulting in debris hitting his car. He went to confront the pilot and when he began to take off, he grabbed the skid bar. There were four passengers on board and the court found that he had endangered the aircraft.
Sentencing Jafari, Judge Michael Roach sent him away for a year, which seems a bit high given the fact that bouncing naked on a neighbor’s trampoline while masturbating gets you only probation in England.
Source: BBC
a few years ago a pilot of a helecopter here in Fl ran out of fuel and landed at a Hess gas station. He lost his license.
I swear, the world is getting nuttier and nuttier …..
AY – he would have endangered the passengers by making the craft unstable. Helicopters are tricky things & pilots have to make allowances for their load that would not be as notices in other aircraft. That said the pilot is lucky he didn’t pull that stunt in the US were too many people are armed & stupid.
Of course had he just stabbed the pilot in the groin & then not allowed anyone to call for help he might have gotten off easier too.
A year? Where do we get these sentences?
Environmental assassins like Tony Hayward get transferred. Economic assassins like Lloyd Blankfein pay a little fine and proceed full steam a head. Constitutional assassins like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney destroy the Constitution are left to roam free enjoying the trappings of their retirement. Have a little crack on you? Lock you up and throw away the key. Grab the skid bar on a helicopter that (likely) illegally lands on your property? How about a year in a cage. Ah, justice.
This makes no sense in the ordinary use of the word. One how did he endanger anyone but himself? Two, the have laws against this type of behavior? Wow, if only I’d thunk of it first…..
The BBC story leaves a lot to be desired in giving the facts of this story. The pictures and commentary though make it sound like this was a landing in a residential neighborhood by a private pilot/possible helicopter owner. That seems to be hardly safe or prudent. I know that helicopters threw up a lot of debris at a very high rate of speed and that is dangerous to nearby property and people having been hit with helicopter debris myself in a parking lot. (Yes, there was damage to some of the cars.)
While the pilot seems to be a DR. of some sort there’s no mention of an emergency transport being made; it seems like a discretionary thing. What kind of laws do they have in Bristol regarding landing aircraft in residential or near residential areas?
I’m inclined to give the outraged/possibly incredulous flat-owner the benefit of the doubt as a first reaction. If ‘endangerment’ is the primary issue I’d like to know more about the area, laws, proximity to houses etc. because the original ‘endangerment’ may have been the pilot’s. The story needs to be fleshed out.