By Associated Press, Published: August 17
PARIS — An airline passenger says her Paris-to-Dublin flight was delayed nearly two hours after celebrated French actor Gerard Depardieu urinated on the plane ahead of takeoff.France’s Europe-1 radio aired an interview with the passenger, identified only by her first name Daniele, saying that Depardieu appeared inebriated and announced “’I need to piss, I need to piss.” The passenger said when the cabin crew told him to remain seated during takeoff, “he stood up and did it (urinated) on the ground.The actor is also a Paris restaurateur and the owner of a vineyard in Burgundy.
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The US skiing team has dismissed an 18-year-old member of its development squad, after he was accused of getting drunk and then urinating on a fellow passenger aboard a JetBlue flight to New York City.
Robert “Sandy” Vietze was detained by police at New York’s Kennedy airport on Wednesday morning, after arriving on a red-eye flight from Portland, Oregon. He faces a federal misdemeanour charge of indecent exposure, according to the US attorney’s office in Brooklyn.
The US Ski and Snowboard Association executive vice-president of athletics, Luke Bodensteiner, said in a statement that Vietze had been dismissed from the team for conduct violations. “Based on the information we have, Sandy Vietze is in violation of the USSA code of conduct and team agreement, and has been dismissed from the team,” confirmed Bodensteiner.
Vietze was nominated to the development team this spring after excelling as an alipine skier at the Green Mountain Valley school, a top ski academy and high school in Waitsfield, Vermont, where tuition costs as much as $42,384 a year. He had been scheduled to compete on the national ski team’s developmental squad for the 2011-12 season.
A Port Authority police department detective wrote in court documents that Vietze told him he had consumed five or six beers and two rum and cola cocktails before boarding the flight. He said he passed out in his seat and awoke to find himself being yelled at by the father of a 12-year-old girl. The girl’s father told the detective that when he returned from a trip to the bathroom at 2.30 am, he found Vietze urinating on his daughter. The man described Vietze as “out of it”.
The Port Authority initially told news outlets on Thursday that federal prosecutors had decided to drop the indecent exposure charge, but a spokesman for the US attorney’s office, Robert Nardoza, said on Friday that the case is still pending. The charge carries a maximum fine of $1,000 and a possibility of up to a year in jail, although time behind bars would be very unusual in such a case.
www.guardian.co.uk
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A Jetstar passenger who urinated in a plane aisle during a flight, spraying other passengers, has been let off with a warning.
The man was flying from Auckland to Singapore on Monday when he answered the call of nature about six hours into the 11-hour trip. A passenger said the man urinated on to another man’s leg and the scarf of a female passenger.
“I hear this sound of running water and then I hear a guy going ‘No, no, no, what the hell is wrong with you?’ And there’s this guy pissing in the aisle, waving back and forth,” Amos Chapple told the New Zealand Herald.
Jetstar confirmed that the crew had to “counsel and manage” a inebriated passenger who “engaged in inappropriate and disruptive behaviour. We can confirm on this occasion, our crew followed all standard procedures including confiscating alcohol brought on board and issuing an onboard warning in conjunction with advice from the captain,” the airline said in a statement. Police were not called as the passenger was no longer disruptive after being warned, the airline said.
“As per our standard procedures, an internal report has been filed and we are following standard internal process including reviewing the customer’s future suitability for travel.” Mr Chapple said he had confronted the man in Singapore but he appeared to have no idea what he had done during the flight.
Jetstar said it was in the process of contacting the customers impacted by the inappropriate behaviour to offer compensation.
and these stories will only proliferate if airlines add a fee to pee. Amtrack looks better and better…