Craig Lowe was on a flight from Manchester to Tenerife
06:02, 19 Aug 2025Updated 11:30, 19 Aug 2025
(Image: Jason Roberts /Manchester Evening News)
A drunk passenger groped the leg of a woman sat next to him after asking her: “Are you going to f*** me then?”
Craig Lowe, 53, had downed six small bottles of red wine on the four-and-a-hour Jet2 flight from Manchester to Tenerife on November 12 2023.
After engaging in light-hearted ‘banter’, Lowe began making crude sexualised comments towards her, telling her: “Would you come back to my hotel room so I can f*** you?”
He then grabbed her inner thigh, Manchester Crown Court heard.
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Lowe, of Wigan, asked her again: “Are you going to f*** me then?” before she got up to the toilet to ‘get away from him’.
When the woman returned, she placed her hoodie over her lap. Lowe then grabbed her thigh twice more, in which she froze before telling him to ‘stop’, which he eventually did
Lowe then verbally abused another passenger who tried to help him after he dropped his phone, telling him: “I’m going to kill you… go on… I’ll have you outside”, the court heard.
As they disembarked the plane and boarded the bus to the terminal, his behaviour continued, with the other passenger’s wife loudly asking: “Can someone get this man away from us.”
In a victim personal statement, read to the court by prosecutor Amy Weir, the woman said: “This journey was supposed to be a relaxing trip away with my family after ten sets of shifts. I am now anxious to travel and I’ll never sit on my own again.”
Craig Lowe leaving Manchester Crown Court(Image: Jason Roberts /Manchester Evening News)
The woman said she was a nervous flier, and the incident exacerbated how she felt.
Continuing, she said: “There was no CCTV on board which makes me more apprehensive about travelling – it means there is nowhere to go.
“I’m just grateful that this occurred towards the end of a four hour flight.”
Jason Smith, defending, said his client was an alcoholic at the time, which ‘ruined his life’ and ‘broke up his marriage’.
“In an attempt to remake himself and take a break, he carried on drinking at the airport and behaved in a thoroughly reprehensible manner,” he said.
“He has no excuse.”
Mr Smith said Lowe had since ‘rebuilt his life’ and abstained from alcohol.
Sentencing, Judge Timothy Smith said: “She described that for the majority of the flight there was nothing untoward about your behaviour – you were ‘fun’. That came to an end towards the end of the flight.
“This court sees too often examples of people who misbehave and drink to excess before going on a flight. Their behaviour, in a confined space, causes fear. They see people, such as yourself, in an intoxicated state, unable to control themselves.
“You say you are disgusted in yourself and your behaviour, and so you should be.”
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Judge Smith said that due to the fact the sentencing hearing was taking place two years after the incident, and that Lowe had taken steps to address his issues, he felt able to suspend a prison sentence.
Lowe, of Lower Green Lane, Tyldesley, was handed 28 weeks imprisonment suspended for 12 months after pleading guilty to entering an aircraft when drunk and sexual assault. He must complete 150 hours unpaid work and 20 rehabilitation activity requirement days.
He must sign onto the Sex Offenders Register for seven years.