A man who drank heavily on an Atlanta to San Francisco AirTran flight and later grabbed a flight attendant when she refused to serve him more wine was sentenced Friday to three months in prison and ordered to pay restitution of $14,584.
The man, Muhammad Abu Tahir, was taken off the flight by FBI agents at Colorado Springs Municipal Airport after the incident.
While the AirTran flight was still in the air, the North American Aerospace Defense Command scrambled two F-16s to escort the commercial airliner to Colorado Springs.
Tahir, 47, of Glen Allen, Va., is from Pakistan but is a legal U.S. resident.
During Tahir’s sentencing hearing Friday in Denver for one count of interference with a flight crew, federal Judge Robert Blackburn ordered that Tahir serve three years of supervision after his release. Howard Pankratz, The Denver Post
