This archive report was first published on 28 August 2019.
Published on August 28, 2019, a man who raised a false bomb alarm on a Kenya Airways flight from Nairobi to Johannesburg in April has been sentenced to four months in prison.
Chifraye Bekele, an Ethiopian national, was found guilty of imperilling the safety of aircraft and persons on board after he made a comment that caused a commotion on the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) flight.
According to the judgement, Mr Bekele asked a flight attendant if she was scared because she thought there was a bomb, just before the plane took off.
The comment caused a scare that led to the grounding of the aircraft, which was scheduled to depart JKIA at 1pm but later flew at 7:30pm.
Mr Bekele claimed in court that he did not make the joke, saying he only spoke Amharic and not English.
