Excellent news , Might concentrate peoples minds somewhat.
Deterrent sentencing is punishing people for crimes that have not yet been committed. A means of controlling the masses and an abhorrence in my opinion.
You have to look at the precise series of events, and exactly what an average person is presented with in the lavatory. Then assume people will become intoxicated if you serve them alcohol - especially if it's known that they can purchase it just prior to the flight.
This is the real world. This man's life was already
'd up, and he is typical of a significant proportion of men of his age in the so-called free world. The intoxication is the issue, everything else after that is human psychology at its saddest.
Gasping for a fag. How many millions suffer that addiction? Intoxication is liberating the mind from responsible thinking. Again, it's the alcohol, not the mindset of a middle-aged family man who when sober would no doubt do anything to protect his children from danger. Did he really set out to start a fire? They'd have us believe he did.
Now look at what such a perpetrator is faced with when he decides the law isn't for him: a tiny room with a plethora of small openings, some containing paper, some just black voids. His cigarette,
we know in our sober minds, is a very significant danger, but to him it's just one of thousands he's disposed of, presumably without incident. The probability is that he made a terrible mistake in the place he disposes of it but it sounds for all the world as though he was determined to start a fire and kill everyone on board - after all, we're repeatedly reminded how high we are and clearly that great altitude makes it a much more serious crime. Well, clearly so in the minds of the prosecution.
The Americans remind passengers every flight that it is a Federal Crime to smoke in the lavatory. That wording lends weight to the warning but even that is not really enough. There should be an immediate alarm inside and outside the loo. Passengers should be made aware of that detection system and the seriousness of the crime - should they commit it. Right now, folk worldwide let preflight safety briefings wash over them, and this very important warning is just part of the noise.
The willingness of crews to let people talk all through their briefing is unacceptable.
This man was it seems, down on his luck. He drinks, possibly too much to be legal to board, if the law were to be applied to the letter. He makes an almost juvenile decision to disobey the weakly presented rules and then mindlessly disposes of the cigarette in the wrong place.
The airline, the entire industry, should be held accountable for his ability to bring down an airliner with an addiction that's known about worldwide. Not just known about, but understood in minute detail.
That aircraft has a bewildering mass of devices to protect it and its contents from all manner of dangers. How can this utterly simplistic vulnerability be allowed to continue for decades?