BA passenger guilty of assault after vaping on flight and threatening to 'bash heads'

Louis Gaston stepped off a British Airways overnight flight at London Heathrow in November 2025 with a problem: he couldn't find his bag. What followed was a six-hour journey's worth of rage compressed into the final minutes on the tarmac—threats, shoves, and enough disruption that by May, a magistrate would find him guilty on four separate counts.

The 31-year-old from Lambeth had boarded flight BA172 from New York's JFK airport on November 23rd after smoking cannabis in the terminal. During the six-hour flight, he drank several gin and tonics and some vodka. As the plane prepared to land around 8am, cabin crew noticed he'd left his seat. When they found him in the toilet, they smelled what they described as cannabis—a distinct odor they said bore no resemblance to the aircraft's air freshener, despite Gaston's later claim that he'd simply sprayed the lavatory after using it. A second crew member ordered him back to his seat. He shouted at them, accused one of coming on to him, and threatened to file a complaint.

Once the aircraft touched down, it sat on the tarmac for roughly an hour waiting for buses. Gaston decided to make his way back to his allocated seat to retrieve his hand luggage. The aisle was packed. An American couple—Zachary Lowry and Laurel Dillon—asked him to wait until there was space to move through. He pushed past them anyway, then did so again, and again, three or four times in total. Each time, he told them to get out of his way, using language that made clear his impatience. When he couldn't find his bag, his frustration turned to threats. "You don't want to see me off this plane," he told them. "I will bash your heads together." On the final push, he placed his hand on Dillon's arm and hip and shoved her hard into her seat. She was bruised by the impact.

Gaston denied everything. He said he'd only brushed past them, that he hadn't vaporized anything in the toilet, that the tall American man had tried to block him. His solicitor argued the case hadn't been proved beyond reasonable doubt—no one had actually witnessed him vaping, she said, and perhaps he simply hadn't heard the crew knocking. But District Judge Kathryn Verghis wasn't persuaded. She saw a pattern: a man who'd consumed cannabis and alcohol, who was uncooperative enough that another passenger had to fasten his seatbelt for him, who used aggressive language, who barged into people in a crowded space. On May 5th, she found him guilty of two counts of assault by beating, one count of failing to obey a pilot's lawful commands, and one count of smoking on an aircraft.

Dillon, speaking via video link from the United States, described the fear of not knowing what Gaston might do next. Lowry said the incident left him uncomfortable and embarrassed—so much so that when they finally left the plane in a police van, he'd been planning to make sure they weren't being followed. Gaston is due to be sentenced in June. The case sits within a broader pattern of disruptive passenger behavior that airlines and regulators continue to grapple with, even as rules around in-flight conduct have grown stricter.