Senior Banker Said Ordered Off Flight For Refusing To Turn Off Phone

Those bankers and their cell phones.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that one of Macquarie Group?s top banking executives in the US was offloaded from a Qantas plane in Los Angeles for alleged disruptive behaviour after refusing to turn off his mobile phone.

The incident is said to have resulted in?the New York-based Senior Managing Director being offloaded from the plane in LA?last month,?and later stopped from taking a connecting flight to Sydney.

The first incident occurred when a flight attendant told the banker, who was seated in business class, to turn off his mobile phone while the Qantas aircraft was taxiing at New York?s John F Kennedy International Airport.

The second involved a conversation with one of Qantas?s airport staff at LA International Airport, at which point he was refused travel on another Qantas plane to Sydney.

No US federal charges are said to have been filed.

A few years back,?a Managing Director at Bear Stearns,?was accused of communicating false information with intent. He?was originally thought to have?told London City airport staff, after he was advised that he was too late?to board?his flight, that he had given a bag with a bomb in it to another passenger who was already?on the plane.

The saga caused chaos at the airport - 15 flights were either delayed or diverted, and over 1,000 passengers were adversely affected. Needless to say, there was no bomb.

There was real confusion over what?the banker?actually said at the airport that day, but?a judge later gave him the benefit of the doubt at trial,?as English?was not?his native language. The judge instructed the jury to find the banker not guilty.

Suschetet would have faced a possible seven-year jail term if found guilty.

Finally, The Guardian reported in 2009 that Bank of America had been obliged to apologise for asking 23 staff to refund fares for the US Airways flight which splash-landed in New York's Hudson River.

The bank's employees were travelling to the firm's corporate headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina, when US ?Airways flight 1549 dramatically ditched off Manhattan in January 2009.

In the hours following the accident, Bank of America won praise for its response. It helped supply dry clothes, swiftly arranged alternative transport home for its employees and even organised a locksmith for those who had left keys in abandoned luggage.

But a day or so later, the bank stained its copybook by emailing those involved and asking them to pay back their fares on the grounds that their business travel had been cancelled.

A Bank of America spokesman blamed mid-level employees for following standard procedure for cancelled trips.

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