Glad to finally see a few people with a bit of self respect coming to the support of this Captain, well said Flaps, and Thunderbox.
The crawling attitude toward 'highly paying pax' is insidious and has contributed to the lack of respect and discipline on board ALL our aircraft. By their logic we would have to be grateful and respectful to animals like Mohammed Atta and his minions on 9-11...he was after all a fare paying passenger!
And another thing.
Virgin did the right thing in supporting their Captain and I congratulate them tooo (if it is really the case).
Finally...it is said that the pax in question was no 'drunken lout'.
How the hell do you know?
My suspicion is that this lout spent his 15 hour delay sucking up the free champagne in the First Class Lounge, getting more and more abusive, and more and more confident of his right to be abusive. After 15 hours of this...was he drunk? Was he tipsy?
Did his breath smell of alcohol? Yer damn right it did!
Now maybe I'm mistaken, but I seem to remember from my Air Law days that the commander of an aircraft is bound by the ANO to refuse carriage to anyone under the influence of alcohol.
If the skipper had carried this guy he'd have been breaking the law...and if there was an incident on board it would have been on the skippers neck.
He did absolutely the right thing, and in truth there isn't a thing Virgin or anyone else could say against him. He had THE LAW on his side.