London - A couple have appeared in court after drunkenly becoming overly "amorous" on a passenger jet waiting to take off.
Christopher Pickering, 45, and Rebecca Cross, 37, pleaded guilty to being intoxicated on the British Airways flight to Marseille last year.
Cabin crew had already moved the couple from their seats on the emergency exit row to the back of the plane because they were so drunk it would be unsafe for them to sit there.
Ravinder Johal, prosecuting, told Isleworth Crown Court how a stewardess then caught Cross with her stockings off and legs in the air as the plane taxied down the runway.
The flight attendant said she saw Pickering sexually touching Cross and instructed her to put her dress down.
The prosecutor added: "They were taken to the London Heathrow police station and admitted to the charge." Pickering, of Dunstable in Bedfordshire, and Cross, of Abingdon in Oxfordshire, said they had "five or six drinks" in the lounge over two hours while they waited for the delayed flight.
Carl Woolf, defending, said the couple were "amorous" on the plane but insisted "there was no suggestion of any nudity and there is no suggestion [Cross] was not wearing underwear".
At their sentencing hearing, Cross broke down in tears after Judge Nicholas Wood told her she would not face a custodial sentence.
She was given a 12-month community order and 60 hours of unpaid work, while Pickering was fined £2 000 (about R37 500).
Judge Wood said: "Even though that in itself is serious... there’s a distinction between being offensive on an aircraft at 30 000 feet and as it is being taxied on the ground. I’m not going to sentence you for the behaviour afterwards, embarrassing and shocking as it may be to anyone who saw it."