Judge jails high-flying mobile user

A Crown Court judge has called for airline companies to seize mobile phones from passengers before flying.

Judge Timothy Mort was speaking after sentencing a man to four months in jail for using his phone to play a game during a flight.

He called for all mobiles to be confiscated as passengers board an aircraft, pointing out that the devices can affect communications and cause auto-pilot systems to malfunction.

The judge warned that mobiles on planes could have fatal consequences. "Maybe the situation has been reached when we have to consider if mobiles should be confiscated before transit," the Daily Express reported him as saying.

He was speaking after sentencing Faiz Chopdat, 23, of Blackburn, Lancashire, who refused to switch off his phone after returning from Luxor to Manchester on 10 September last year.

It is believed that he was playing the popular game Tetris while sitting next to his new wife. After several warnings he was arrested when the plane landed in the UK.

Chopdat was found guilty by a jury last month of endangering the safety of an aircraft and could have faced a two-year jail term.

Acting for the defence, Roger Hedgeland said that his client had no previous convictions and had been acting with "some sort of bravado" on his return from honeymoon and had become depressed since being arrested.