In what is believed to be the first case of its kind before a Cayman Islands court, an American tourist has been fined CI$1,000 for vaping inside an airplane bathroom.
Brendan Joseph Fallon, 36, a US Navy veteran, vaped to try to calm his nerves as the United Airlines jet from Newark, New Jersey, was preparing to land at Owen Roberts International Airport in Grand Cayman on Wednesday, 10 Jan., the Summary Court heard on Friday.
Fallon pleaded guilty to carrying out a “reckless and negligent act” by vaping during the flight, about 10 minutes before it landed in Cayman. The emission from the vape triggered the fire alarm on the plane.
His lawyer, John Furniss, told Magistrate Vanessa Allard that Fallon had previously been in the Navy for eight years, and had worked for four-and-a-half of those years on board an aircraft carrier at sea. This necessitated him to be flown between land and the carrier by a Navy aircraft.
That experience for Fallon “who is no big fan of flying, did not help his nerves or anxiety,” Furniss said, and he described one instance of landing on the aircraft carrier in which Fallon had passed out due to his anxiety.
Since then, Fallon’s fear of flying had continued, so “when he was flying down here, he became anxious, he started sweating, and worrying, and was concerned he would pass out as he had done when he landed on the carrier. So, as a result, he went into the bathroom and used his vaporiser,” Furniss told the magistrate.
He said he was surprised that a vape could set off a fire alarm.
“It is clear that what he did had the potential to cause the alarm to go off, which would suggest there was a potential danger. … It is purely a potential, because I don’t believe there is any flame connected with a vaporiser,” Furniss said.
Fallon was arrested, and then bailed, by Customs and Border Control officers at the airport, after the airline alerted authorities at Owen Roberts to the incident.
The flight was not delayed or diverted, Furniss pointed out.
“He accepts it was a bad decision on his part,” the lawyer said, “but there were other concerns because of what had happened when he was in Navy.” He asked the magistrate to take Fallon’s “particular circumstances” into account when deciding on a sentence.
Allard, addressing Fallon, said, “I must say it is not every day these courts are faced with anything similar to what you have accepted was poor decision-making on your part.”
She noted that on all non-smoking flights around the world, airlines make it very clear that smoking is not permitted in the aircraft.
She fined Fallon $1,000, to be paid before he departed the islands this weekend, at which point his passport would be returned to him.
Fallon had travelled to Cayman with his girlfriend to visit a friend who lives here.
“So it is clear, Mr. Fallon, this is a very serious offence,” Allard told him.
She added that she was “happy that nothing untoward happened”, such as the flight being diverted or the fire alarm impacting the navigation system, but said the crew and passengers of the aircraft must have been concerned when the fire alarm went off.
The magistrate said she was not inclined to make an order not to record a conviction, because “this is a serious enough offence that it must reflect the court’s absolute disapproval of this behaviour”.
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