EXCLUSIVE | 

Air rage orangewoman who assaulted four cabin crew on Jet2 flight is ant

i-violence campaigner

“Sure it’s 5pm somewhere”

Yesterday at 11:40

This is the businesswoman who pleaded guilty this week to assaulting four cabin crew staff while drunk on a plane.

Heather McCarroll went berserk on a Jet2 flight and later claimed she was a “nervous flyer” and had taken two prescribed pills to help her cope.

But we can reveal the 38-year-old is a ‘frequent flyer’ who describes herself on Facebook as a “travel-obsessed sun worshipper”.

Indeed, the mum of two is a regular visitor to the Spanish resort of Lloret De Mar, and despite her violent outburst on the Jet2 flight last September she was back on a flight to Scotland a few months later.

Despite facing serious charges she even posted a picture of herself drinking bottles of cider in the morning at the Lagan Bar at Belfast International Airport on April 28.

She posted “sure it’s 5pm somewhere” and when someone commented she had “started early”, she replied stating the drink was “medication to calm the pre-flight nerves lol”.

Her conviction of violent attacks on crew members is a devastating blow for the well-known local woman as she is a campaigner against violence against women.

On her Facebook page Heather McCarroll has spoken about being the victim of violence herself and regularly posts about violence against women.

According to her account she is a proud Orangewoman, even growing Orange lillies outside her front door for this year’s Twelfth, and posing for a picture with a bandsman’s hat on.

This week, defence counsel Aaron Thompson told Antrim Magistrates Court, sitting in Ballymena, that Heather McCarroll was entering guilty pleas to four charges of common assault and a further charge of being drunk on a plane last year.

However, he said, she denied four further charges arising from the incident on a Jet2 flight on September 6, although he said he was confident the case could be resolved without the need of a contest.

McCarroll, from Kilmakevit Square in Cullybackey, Co Antrim, still denies endangering the safety of an aircraft and behaving in a “threatening, abusive, insulting or disorderly manner towards a member of the crew of an aircraft”.

She also denies failing to obey the lawful command of a pilot and causing criminal damage to a bathroom belonging to Jet2.

Applying for the case to be adjourned for two weeks, Mr Thompson told District Judge Amanda Brady: “I’m going to write to the prosecution in the meantime… we can probably resolve this without a contest.

“I have spoken to her and she has a pretty straightforward attitude,” he told Judge Brady, who put the case back to September 12.

At an earlier hearing, the court was told how McCarroll had been drunk on board a plane and had sworn at crew members, but could not remember further events after that as she had “taken two prescribed diazepam before the flight as she was a nervous flyer and that she was diabetic and low insulin levels could sometimes lead to blackouts”.

The court also heard the defendant, who makes a living selling cosmetics online, had expressed remorse to police for what she could remember of the shocking incident.