Lawyer, politician, and twitter political activist Miguna Miguna was Wednesday conferred an additional reference by the government; unruly passenger.
This, according to spokesperson Cyrus Oguna, is owing to the drama that ensued at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in February and March of 2018 during his deportation.
Miguna has put up a spirited physical fight against government officials who successfully bundled him into a plane out of the country in the full glare of shocked passengers and cabin crew of the KLM flight.
He also caused a scene during his second deportation in March, when he was forced onto a Dubai flight after attempting to get back to the country after his February ordeal.
But Miguna’s behaviour is not peculiar to him alone. In fact, ‘unruly passenger’ is an official categorization of individuals behaving oddly on flights by aviation regulatory bodies such as IATA and ICAO.
Such individuals are said to suffer air-rage, a phenomenon that occurs in one out of about 1000 flights daily.
While intoxication from alcohol and other drugs is the leading cause of air rage incidents, deportees and inadmissible passengers are also listed as instigators of unruliness on planes.
Here are some dramatic incidents that have occurred over the years on planes, which in comparison, make Miguna’s antics quite insignificant.
The man who smeared his excrement on a plane
In 1995, one Gerard Finneran was so upset at flight attendants for refusing to serve him drinks, that he defecated in the first class section of the plane as his fellow passengers watched. Worse still, he stepped on his faeces and started walking around the plane, leaving behind gross footprints and smearing more of the poop on the walls of the plane.
He was arrested on arrival in New York.
The businessman who shot at a plane
Incidents of luggage disputes at airports occur daily, but when a Cambodian businessman was told to pay extra fee to get his bags after alighting a plane, he was so furious that he took a handgun and shot off one of the wheels of the Boeing 737 plane.
The damaged wheel cost Ksh.300000.
Two fighting families
In 2011, police arrested two families upon arrival in Barbados after they engaged in a physical fight midair.
The first family had grown weary of the other family which was celebrating the birthday of their kin on the plane, and threw coffee at them.
This resulted in a confrontation of blows among the members of the two families, who sustained minor injuries.
The delusional pilot
A mentally disturbed pilot, Clayton Osbon in 2012, went on a terror rampage on a plane, telling passengers to say their prayers as the plane was about to go down on account of Al Qaeda.
His co-pilot managed to land the plane safely after locking him out of the cockpit, and Osbon was detained and later tried.
The man who stripped naked at an airport
A male passenger on an Easyjet flight grew verbally abusive and upon landing at the airport, urinated all over the arrival terminal before stripping naked to the shock of other passengers and airport crew.
He also challenged the pilot of his flight to a duel.
MP who flogged stewardess with slippers
An irate Indian MP was recorded beating a flight attendant with his pair of slippers after she declined to offer him a business class seat.
Interestingly, the plane was entirely economy class.
The Ethiopian who made bomb claims on a KQ plane
In 2019, an Ethiopian national was jailed for four months after he claimed that there was a bomb on a Johannesburg destined Kenya Airways plane.
His false claims caused a three hour shut down at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA).
Jesus on a plane
A 21-year-old American, Dean Trummel, caused a scare on a US Airways flight after he started walking around the cabin hitting passengers with a pillow and claiming that he was filled with the spirit of Jesus.
Shortly afterwards, he attempted to break into the plane’s cockpit and although flight attendants were able to subdue him, some suffered injuries serious enough to require surgery.