Yet again the UK justice system has signalled that it is perfectly acceptable to break into the secure areas of anan Aerodrom to protests as you will not have to worry about going to prison.
I suspect that if I entered the judges Court to protest I would be in prison for contempt of court before I knew it. It is just a pity the airlines can not go after these idiots for the loses incurred. Perhaps if they ended up loosing their houses to cover the airlines loses they might think twice in future. They were also protesting and trying to to prevent the deportation of people who had illegally entered the UK and so broke the law of this Country.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-47145449
Fifteen protesters who chained themselves to a plane to stop it deporting people to Africa have avoided immediate jail sentences.
Dubbed the Stansted 15, the group broke through a fence at the airport in a bid to reach the jet taking 60 people to Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone.
They were found guilty of endangering the safety of an aerodrome.
Three were given suspended jail terms and 12 received community orders at Chelmsford Crown Court.
The group has said they will appeal against their convictions, which they believe have serious implications for the freedom to protest.
They used bolt cutters to enter Stansted Airport and attached themselves to the Boeing 767 using tubes and expanding foam on 28 March 2017.
The runway was closed for more than an hour and 23 incoming flights had to be diverted to other airports.
Media captionStansted 15 'relieved' to avoid jailPassing sentence, Judge Christopher Morgan told the 15 that while he accepted the group were seeking to demonstrate in support of their cause, they had come "perilously close" to causing a catastrophe.
He said: "In normal circumstances only a normal custodial sentence would have been justified in this case, but in your case I accept that your intentions were to demonstrate."
"There is no doubt that you understood that there were safety implications," he added.
"You put at risk the safe operations of the airport and the persons who were there on the night."
Analysis
By Dominic Casciani, BBC Home Affairs correspondent
In court, the judge faced some tough arguments from a top human rights barrister about his duties to balance the question of airport security with the need to protect freedom of speech and assembly. Judge Morgan said he did this through tempering his sentences - in other circumstances, he said, he would have jailed the lot of them.
Some of the defendants looked jubilant and defiant. Others looked like defendants often do: exhausted by the process, somewhat remorseful and promising never to do it again.
So if the Court of Appeal decides not to examine the convictions, this prosecution will stand as a warning to others of the type of charge they could face for endangering an airport.