Flight-ban family insists row was just a singsong

All they were doing was having a good Irish singsong. They had saved up for three years to go on a dream holiday to Montego Bay and they were going to enjoy themselves from the minute they stepped on the flight at Gatwick Airport until they touched down in the Caribbean.

The first time we saw the Connors and the Driscolls they ran across the car-park of the Norfolk International Airport in Virginia to the bewildered American camera crews shouting: "We're free, Nelson Mandela, we're free" and one of the women who had been handcuffed waved red-marked wrists at the camera in a gesture of defiance.

Just six hours into their flight on board an Airtours Boeing 767 as it flew down the eastern seaboard of America, several of the Connors, Driscolls, Coyles and Coopers, an extended traveller family of Irish descent, broke into song.

It was nothing to worry about, they said, they weren't very loud and they were sitting at the back of the plane. Others in their group were asleep, blissfully unaware of the party going on around them, having had a few drinks earlier in the flight.

Another passenger took umbrage at the women's singing and asked one of the men in the group, Myles Connors, to tell them to pipe down. The women were only enjoying themselves, the passenger was informed, a drink was thrown over Myles Connors and half-an-hour later, after cabin crew tried unsuccessfully to calm everyone down, the captain diverted the plane to Norfolk, Virginia, and the London-Irish contingent was thrown off.

They were stranded in Norfolk for two days, where they were photographed chain-smoking and pleading with American airlines to take them home. And when they eventually raised the estimated £1,000 sterling each to fly with Northwest Airlines to Gatwick Airport on Wednesday morning, they were a very different crowd from that which we had seen four days earlier.

They were still insisting they had done nothing wrong, but now they were hiding their faces from the cameras, adamant that all they wanted to do was get home to the 18 or so children they had left behind with babysitters and relatives.

As the women linked arms and posed for photographers when they arrived back at their caravan site in Lewisham, south London, there was a still a trace of the earlier defiance in their eyes, but essentially they were the "victims" of the piece, they said, not the villains.

As they posed with their mock-Chanel handbags, baby pink jackets and dyed blond hair, the women told reporters they weren't going to be pushed around. They were considering claiming compensation from Airtours for the cost of their holiday.

The men in the group were mostly absent. They were content to give a few choice quotes over the telephone but unwilling to be photographed or filmed, and when they arrived back in Britain they preferred to hold up newspapers or pull down baseball caps to cover their faces.

But what everyone really wanted to know was where had this family, who had lived mostly on a caravan site for the past 18 years or so, found the £20,000 to pay for their holiday? Priscilla Driscoll informed reporters that the families were "dealers".

It seems the men among the Connors and the Driscolls drive around Lewisham in a little van which has a helpful slogan written on the side saying: "All work considered".

This work involves paving the gardens and driveways of anyone who cares to ring their mobile number, and this self-employed group will even tar roads or build an extension on your house.

The former landlord of their local pub came out of the woodwork to tell the media that the family was banned from his pub last year for allegedly fighting and ripping out toilets.

And as if to drive the knife in further, observant neighbours fed into the "why them?" culture when they recalled seeing a £30,000 Toyota Landcruiser parked outside the caravan site.

Several if not all of this family who, according to locals have left Lewisham for a few weeks, face possible legal action to recover the £20,000 cost to Airtours of rerouteing the flight.

The entire family has been banned from Airtours flights, the police are investigating the whole incident and they could be charged with endangering the flight under the Air Navigation Order.

Whether airlines should provide passengers on long-haul flights with unlimited amounts of alcohol is an issue that is under consideration by officials at the British Department of Transport and the airlines.

After their discussions with British ministers earlier this week, Sussex police (which patrols Gatwick Airport) said one way of tackling the problem of so-called air-rage would be the introduction of a new offence of interfering with the flight crew in the performance of their duties.

They are also pushing for the maximum penalty under the Air Navigation Order to be increased from two years to five.

For the sake of the Connors and their extended family and for the passengers and crew on board the Airtours flight, it must be hoped that the police can identify who are the victims and the villains in this ghastly tale.

One of the passengers on board the flight described the family this week as "loud and raucous, getting drunk, rude and swearing". Airtours says claims of an innocent singsong are far from the truth.

Whatever anyone else says, the family is sticking to its story: "It was unfair that we were all put off. All it was a sing-song."