Fly Like An Eejit

Burnaby Park this morning. Around 9am.

n one of the more farcical court cases to be heard at Dublin District Court of late, a Greystones man was convicted and fined for refusing not to use the toilet on a flight approach to Dublin Airport.

The pilot had considered abandoning the flight when 42-year-old Andris Ekis ignored requests from the cabin crew to stay in his seat.

A father of four with an address at Burnaby Park, Ekis pleaded guilty to offensive conduct on board an aircraft.

It was at 12pm on March 2nd as the Fasten Seatbelts lights came on that the accused woke from a three-hour sleep with, said his solicitor Murrough O’Rourke, the need to use the toilet. After ignoring instructions to stay in his seat, flight attendants stated that after Ekis came out of the cubicle, they smelled smoke and saw a cigarette butt in the toilet. Something he insisted in court wasn’t true.

In a separate incident, the accused was found to be driving without insurance when he was stopped by gardaí on September 24th, 2023, driving uninsured again on December 28th that year.

Ekis had 40 previous convictions, for drugs, motoring, public order and other offences, and it was stated in court that he had developed a heroin problem since moving to Ireland from Latvia 10 years ago.

Convicted and fined €300, the judge made the fine payable forthwith, sentencing Ekis to two days in jail in default.