Filed under: Air Travel, Weird, Celebrity

AP

UPDATE, 8/19: Depardieu has apologized, via his flying companion, for peeing on the plane.

Fellow actor Edouard Baer was flying with Depardieu when the incident occurred. In a statement, Baer said that Depardieu has “prostate problems” and he had not been drinking at the time, the BBC reports.

The statement read: “Gerard was upset at this and offered to clean up the mess. He has prostate problems and it was very worrying and humiliating for him. He was also stone-cold sober at the time. This is not the way he usually behaves.”

Depardieu was removed from the flight and caught a later plane to Dublin.

Previously, 8/17: The French actor Gerard Depardieu gave the passengers on a CityJet flight from Paris to Dublin quite the show on Tuesday when he reacted to the news he would not be allowed to use a bathroom until after take off by urinating on the plane’s carpet in full view of the cabin.

The story broke when an eyewitness went on the French radio station Europe 1 and recounted Depardieu’s urinary performance. The witness said that Depardieu begged a stewardess to let him in the bathroom, saying “Je veux pisser” repeatedly.

The stewardess asked the actor to wait fifteen minutes for the plane to reach its cruising altitude. Depardieu, who the witness claimed — believably — seemed drunk, declined to do so.

“There and then he did it on the floor…” the witness said. “No one said anything. It all happened with courtesy.”

After Depardieu relieved himself, the plane returned to its gate, where a grounds crew reportedly spent two hours cleaning up the mess.

A CityJet spokesman confirmed to Agence France Press that the incident had taken place, but did not say whether Depardieu had been been removed from the plane.

Gerard Depardieu, who runs a vineyard when he isn’t acting, has a reputation for drunken antics. In 2009, he literally beat up a car near his home — smashing the windshield with his fist — and in 1990 was convicted of drunk driving.

The actor’s turn in the role of public urinator is just the latest instance of what seems to be a growing trend: peeing-on-a-plane stories. A drunk skier may have peed on a sleeping 11-year-old last week and, in June, a drunk Jetstar passenger relieved himself in the aisle of a Singapore-bound jet.

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Filed under: Air Travel, News

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A British solar scientist is warning long haul fliers that they may be subjected to cancer causing cell damage on flights near the poles due to an increasing number of solar energetic particles and galactic cosmic rays.

The alert, which sounds like something out of an early James Bond film, is based on shifts in solar weather.

According to Mike Lockwood, a Professor of Space Environment Physics at the University of Reading, the sun has spent the last decade spitting out flares and superheated gas and is about to transition into a period of relative calm. That transition, according to Lockwood, will be marked by highly irregular behavior during which gas particles will shoot from the sun towards Earth.

These gas particles can be carcinogenic, so Lockwood is urging those who frequently fly the long routes over the North Pole region – Seoul to New York, London to San Francisco, Chicago to Moscow – to get regularly tested for cancer.

Writing in the Journal of Geophysical Research, Lockwood claimed: “The supersonic nature of the solar wind means open solar flux can only be removed by near-Sun magnetic reconnection between open solar magnetic field lines.”

Obviously.

Lockwood dumbed it down a bit for the Daily Mail, saying “Analysis shows that the risk of the space-weather effects is considerably enhanced over the next century compared with the space age thus far.”

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Filed under: Air Travel, News

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An English woman’s fear of flying got her off the hook on Monday as a judge refused to send her to jail for drunkenly brawling with other passengers and the crew on an EasyJet flight.

Lynn Grimes, a 41-year-old woman who was returning to Manchester from vacation in Athens on December 7, spent most of her flight back to England sitting with the cabin crew, who she had told she didn’t fly well, and drinking wine. When she was told to return to her actual seat for landing, she was less then pleased and more than tipsy.

According to the Daily Mail, Grimes grabbed one passenger by the hair and kicked a steward in the stomach. He refusal to sit forced the pilot to abort landing until she could be calmed down.

Grimes pleaded guilty to endangering an aircraft and two counts of assault, normally more than enough to earn passage to the clink, but judge Jonathan Geake said he wouldn’t imprison somebody who “simply panicked.”

Grimes’ lawyer claimed “She was at the time very apologetic and severely embarrassed by her behavior.” The lawyer also noted that she has since flown to Greece multiple times “without incident.:

Grimes received a 18 month suspended sentence and an appointment with a medical professional. She also serve 60 hours of community service.

Grimes joins a growing list of drunken airplane passengers. In April, a drunk American Airlines passenger forced an emergency landing after he became unruly. On May 3rd, a drunk Air France passenger claimed his name was bin Laden while trying to get a boarding pass for a flight to Paris. On May 4th, a drunk British Airways passenger groped a flight attendant as she served him coffee. In June, a drunk Jetstar passenger urinated in the plane’s aisle. And just last week, a former Olympic hopeful reportedly drunkenly peed on a girl on a redeye JetBlue flight. The girl’s family has come forward saying he peed on the aisle, not their beloved 11-year old.

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Filed under: Air Travel, News, Video

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UPDATE, 8/16: The teenager allegedly caught urinating on a young girl on a JetBlue flight last week was actually relieving himself on the floor, claims the girl’s family.

According to The Oregonian, the family released a statement that Robert Vietze was actually peeing on the floor next to their daughter’s seat – not on their daughter.

“While family members have cooperated with authorities in the investigation, they neither welcome nor encourage further publicity,” The Oregonian reports. “The family’s main concern is the welfare of their daughter.”

After being taken into custody Wednesday, Vietze was issued a federal summons for misdemeanor indecent exposure. If convicted, he could face a $1,000 fine and up to a year in prison.

Before flying, Vietze admittedly consumed five to six beers and two rum and cokes before boarding his flight. The alcohol apparently “hit him” while in the air, and he walked to seat 15A (where the girl was sitting) and relieved himself. When confronted by the girl’s father, Vietze said “he had an accident,” reports the paper.

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UPDATE, 8/12: 18-year old Robert Vietze was a member of the U.S. Ski Team. He has seen been kicked off the team. He is (was) considered one of the most elite skiers in the nation.

The New York Post reports that Vietze was returning from a training camp at Oregon’s Mount Hood when the incident occurred. Vietze was in the running for the 2014 Olympics, but is name was removed from the team’s development roster on Thursday.

“We have no comment, nothing to say,” Vietze’s mother told reporters outside their Vermont home.

The kicker? Turns out the girl was with her father, a Stage 4 cancer patient, and sister on the way to visit her grandmother in Long Island for the first time since her father’s diagnosis.

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PREVIOUSLY, 8/11: A drunk male passenger was caught peeing on a sleeping 11-year old girl on a JFK-bound JetBlue flight on Wednesday.

18-year old Robert Vietze of South Warren, Vermont was on a red eye flight from Portland, Oregon when he started peeing on a sleeping 11-year old girl who was traveling with her sister and father, the New York Post reports.

Vietze was drunk, having consumed eight drinks, and stumbled five rows behind him (presumably towards the bathroom?!) when he started peeing on the girl. The girl’s family was using the bathroom at the time.

“I was drunk, and I did not realize I was pissing on her leg,” the 6-foot-4, 195-pound Vietze told law enforcement.

The unidentified girl’s father caught Vietze peeing on his daughter and started screaming, “F— that kid! I don’t want him near my family!” a fellow passenger told the Post.

Flight attendants separated the father and Vietze, whom they moved to the back of the plane. They also tried to clean up the pee with soap from the bathrooms.

Yet the already exciting flight was far from over. An hour before the plane landed, another passenger started complaining of chest pains and vomited. The pilot addressed the plane, asking “Is anybody on this flight a nurse or doctor? We have a medical emergency.” Yet no one stepped forward so flight attendants worked to keep him calm.

A witness told the Post that the pilots “kept coming out of the cockpit to talk to the flight crew about what was going on.”

Six Port Authority cops greeted the plane when it landed at 6:30am. Two helped the sick passenger while four carted Vietze into custody.

Vietze has been issued a federal summons for indecent exposure.

This is not, surprisingly, the first time a passenger has peed on another under the influence of alcohol. Back in June, a drunk New Zealand man on a Jetstar flight from Auckland to Singapore peed on the plane’s carpet, a man’s leg and a woman’s scarf after drinking whiskey out of Burger King cups with friends. The man, Michael Aitkin, eventually came forward and apologized profusely to his fellow passengers for his actions.

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UPDATE 8/15/11: Ramesh Advani, who admitted to groping a fellow passenger on a Continental flight last year, will spend a year in jail, reports the Associated Press.

Advani, 64, Berkeley Heights, N.J., was sentenced Monday in a U.S. District Court in Newark, N.J.

He will also have to pay a $10,000 fine and serve five years of supervised release after he leaves jail

Advani was on a flight from Newark to Hong Kong in May 2010 when he admittedly reached under the blanket of a woman seated next to him and assaulted her. He pleaded guilty to a charge of abusive sexual conduct in April.

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Previously, 4/13/11: A New Jersey man admitted in federal court yesterday that he had groped a sleeping woman on an overnight flight from Hong Kong to Newark last May.

Ramesh Advani, 64, admitted he reached his hand under the woman’s blanket and fondled her during the 15-hour Continental flight, authorities say.

The woman slept until two passengers in the row behind her noticed and kicked the woman’s seat until she woke up, authorities say. Startled, the woman rushed over to flight attendants to tell them what had happened.

Advani was detained when the plane landed. He pleaded guilty today to a count of sexual abusive contact and now faces up to three years in prison and a $250,000 fine when he is sentenced in August.

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