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Joseph McCabe, who runs his own construction firm and co-owns a party boat business, was jailed for 46 weeks on Friday at Edinburgh Sheriff Court after admitting four sexual offences

A former soldier who sexually assaulted four Jet2 cabin crew during a flight to Tenerife has been jailed.

Joseph McCabe groped and slapped the buttocks of two flight attendants before grabbing a third around the waist and attempting to hug a fourth. A court heard McCabe’s behaviour forced the plane, which had left Edinburgh, to be diverted to the Portuguese island of Porto Santo.

Police there arrested the 40-year-old man and, last month, he admitted the four sexual offences. McCabe, who was a private in the Royal Logistic Corps for five years, was jailed for 46 weeks on Friday at Edinburgh Sheriff Court.

The court heard McCabe made sexual comments to one woman about her tights and make up, asked her age and where she lived and ripped up a written warning he had been given for his drunken conduct. The former soldier also threw his bank card at an air employee and began dancing in the aisle on the plane in March last year.

READ MORE: Student rapist, 26, jailed after four-year spree of attacks on multiple womenREAD MORE: Woman sexually assaulted at busy city centre bus stop as cops release CCTV

The defendant, who now runs his own construction firm and co-owns a party boat business called The Drunken Anchor, has been handed a lifelong ban from flying with Jet2 and has refused to pay the £5,000 fine the airline had imposed on him.

Sentencing, Sheriff Alison Stirling said the offence had involved “a high level of culpability and a high level of harm”. McCabe, who has two children, was also placed on the sex offenders register for 10 years and was made subject to non-harassment orders banning him from having any contact with the victims for an indefinite period. Solicitor Anna Kocela, defending, said her client is a self-employed building boss and had been drinking excessively at the time of the flight due to a family bereavement.

Previously, prosecutor Miriam Farooq told the court the Jet2 flight took off from Edinburgh Airport bound for Tenerife with around 110 passengers on board at around 8.30am on March 15 last year, reports Daily Record.

Ms Farooq said the flight was packed with families and children and shortly after take off cabin crew had noticed McCabe “making multiple trips to the toilet”.

The fiscal depute said around 90 minutes into the flight a female flight attendant was serving a passenger when she “felt someone behind her touching her buttocks”.

The employee turned round to find McCabe was “looking at her with a smirk on his face” and had asked her “where she bought her tights because he liked them”.

McCabe, from Glasgow, was given a verbal warning on the flight and then ripped up a written warning given to him by the air crew for his shocking behaviour.

Singapore Airlines’ ultra-long-haul route covers 9,537 miles – but it doesn’t come cheap.

The world’s longest flight links America to Asia, with travellers buckled in for nearly 19 hours. Singapore Airlines currently holds the record for the lengthiest long-haul journey, operating from New York’s JFK Airport to Singapore Changi.

The epic 9,537-mile trek boasts a scheduled flight time of 18 hours and 50 minutes and first took to the skies back in 2018.

Singapore Airlines deploys their cutting-edge A350-900ULRs on this route, aircraft capable of remaining airborne for over 20 hours non-stop.

These planes achieve such endurance thanks to a specially adapted fuel system. This enhancement boosts the aircraft’s total fuel capacity to an enormous 24,000 litres.

Yet this mammoth journey isn’t available to all, as Singapore Airlines doesn’t provide economy seating on this route. The carrier instead provides 67 Business Class seats and 94 Premium Economy Class seats.

Premium Economy travellers can relish additional legroom, a footrest, and an adjustable headrest. Passengers also benefit from noise-cancelling headphones and WiFi throughout their journey, reports the Express.

Business class flyers experience ultimate privacy, with their seats transforming into completely flat beds for proper rest during travel. Singapore Airlines maintains that the A350-900ULR delivers passengers a “more comfortable travelling experience”.

The aircraft boasts a host of additional amenities including elevated ceilings, expansive windows and specially engineered lighting systems to combat jet lag.

The carrier maintains that the aircraft’s cutting-edge carbon composite construction also enables superior air quality throughout the cabin.

Prospective passengers will need deep pockets, as tickets routinely command prices well into five-figure territory.

Singapore Airlines’ chief executive, Mr Goh Choon Phong, has previously stated that the new service will provide the “fastest way” to journey between these two metropolitan hubs.

He said: “Singapore Airlines has always taken pride in pushing the boundaries to provide the best possible travel convenience for our customers, and we are pleased to be leading the way with these new non-stop flights using the latest technology, ultra-long-range Airbus A350-900ULR.

“The flights will offer our customers the fastest way to travel between the two cities – in great comfort, together with Singapore Airlines’ legendary service – and will help boost connectivity to and through the Singapore hub.”

An investigation by consumer group Which? has raised questions about how available the cheapest claimed cabin bag fees advertising by budget airlines are in reality

Advertising watchdogs are investigating claims about easyJet’s cabin bag fees.

The budget airline says passengers can take a bag on board from just £5.99 each way. But researchers from consumer group Which? were unable to find the price when they searched 520 easyJet options. The cheapest it found was £23.49, and the average £30 – about five times more expensive than the lowest price claimed. And as the cabin bag fees are one way, for most passengers the cost would be doubled when returning home from their trip.

The finding prompted Which? to lodge a complaint with the Advertising Standards Authority, and it is now being investigated.

A spokesperson for easyJet said: “EasyJet’s bag options and pricing is transparent and well understood by our customers, allows them to pay for only what they want and no more and enables us to keep fares low for everyone. This year 100 million passengers are choosing to fly with us and with our customer satisfaction scores up year on year, it’s clear that customers continue to value the choices that we offer.”

Which? also looked for Ryanair’s claimed lowest cabin bag price of £12 each way, and says it only found it available twice out of 634 flights – or just 0.3% of the time. The average fee for Ryanair was £20.50, it says.

It was a similar story for Wizz Air’s 15 euro claim, that Which? found was available just twice on the 338 flights checked.

Rory Boland, Editor of Which? Travel, said: “Our research shows that the tens of millions of passengers who need to take a cabin bag will pay much more than the cheapest price advertised – rather than a few pounds, prices for bags can often be more than the flight itself. “The tactics used by these airlines deserve to be called out, that’s why we have shared our findings with the regulator.”

Ryanair hit back strongly to the claims against it, branding the Which? research “total rubbish”. A spokesperson said: “Ryanair operates over 100,000 flights each month or over 1.2million flights annually so your ‘survey’ of just 600 flights is statistically too small to be representative or accurate.”

A Wizz Air spokesperson said: “Wizz Air flies over 75 million passengers each year, so a sample of 350 flights isn’t representative of cabin bag pricing across our full network. “Given the small sample and the fact we’ve had no visibility of the data, we believe it is potentially misleading.”