Recent S'pore visitor Boris Johnson is London mayor, good Samaritan and 'flight crisis manager'
On his way home after an Asian tour, London Mayor Boris Johnson was caught up in a mid-air drama.
He tried to calm a passenger who became abusive and violent on the Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight to London.
A member of his delegation said the unnamed man was “off his head” before he was restrained by cabin crew.
Photo: Twitter
The man began singing and shouting abuse. Fellow passengers and the crew attempted to calm him, and were initially successful.
But he became unruly again and was restrained.
A flight steward was said to have sustained a cut cheek in the melee, newspaper The Star reported.
The Mayor’s official spokesman said: “We understand the gentlemen was restrained by the crew and detained by police on arrival at Heathrow.”
Johnson was on a 13-hour flight from Kuala Lumpur and is said to have been disturbed by the shouting and singing. He moved to sit by the abusive passenger and tried to calm him.
Eventually five male crew members intervened and pinned the man down.
The Good Samaritan
Police boarded the plane when it landed and led the man off the aircraft before the rest of the passengers were allowed to disembark.
Scotland Yard said David Morris, 43, of Surrey was later charged with one count of assault by beating, one count of behaving in a threatening, abusive or insulting manner towards a member of the crew, and one count of being drunk in an aeroplane.
It is not the first time that the Mayor has played Good Samaritan.
In 2009, he intervened to rescue Franny Armstrong, a documentary maker, when he came across her being attacked in the street by what he described as a gang of “feral” young girls, including one wielding an iron bar.
And earlier this year, while on a campaign trip to Harrow, he and David Cameron stopped their car to help a young woman who had collapsed in the street.
Sources: Star Online, YouTube
Related report: The London mayor called the MRT 'Singapore's gleaming tube'. So which is better: London Tube or the MRT?
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