UK court jails man to 10yrs over smoking on flight to Egypt

CAIRO – 26 May 2017: A British man who smoked a cigarette on a flight from United Kingdom to Egypt in 2015 had his jail sentence extended to nine years and six months, reported Mirror newspaper on its website Thursday.

The plane was flying from Birmingham to the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, and was 33,000 feet in the air when drunken John Cox lit a cigarette and threw it in the plane’s toilet’s bin. It later started a fire.

According to the newspaper, the plane crew struggled to put out the fire. Cox, 26, admitted committing arson and a UK court ruled to increase his jail sentence to almost 10 years after agreeing the initial sentence was “unduly lenient.”