Teenage women narrowly avoid jail over airline bomb threat

Two teenage women who telephoned threats to an international airline claiming to be suicide bombers narrowly avoided jail terms in Christchurch today.

Georgina Lilliam Langley, 19, and Stephanie Kate Austin, 18, had pleaded guilty in Christchurch District Court to two charges of threatening to harm people or property, at an earlier hearing.

The charges related to two telephone calls made by the pair to Singapore Airlines during which they disguised their voices and pretended to be terrorists.

In the first call on November 5, they attempted to book eight business class tickets before threatening staff and stating their intention to blow up a plane, insisting, ``Everyone will die today''.

In the second call, made on November 29, the women said a bomb had been planted in the cockpit of a plane and would explode within 10 minutes. Singapore Airlines alerted the commander of an airborne flight out of Auckland and staff conducted a discreet search. No bomb was found.

Another plane on the ground was searched and police increased their presence as passengers boarded the aircraft.

Austin's defence counsel, Vanessa Sugrue said: ``While the offending was dramatic and extreme, it was not sinister.''

She said her client was deeply remorseful for her actions and added that through her actions, she had now lost her ability to pursue her chosen career as a nanny.

April Kelland, defending Langley, added: ``The offending had been stupid, not thought out in any way and has been a salutary lesson to them.''

In sentencing the duo, Judge Jane Farish said both were ``equally culpable in causing a huge amount of anxiety and concern for an awful lot of people''.

She said her starting point for sentencing was a custodial sentence but this was mitigated by the pair's immediate guilty pleas.

Judge Farish sentenced both women to three months of community detention with a 12 hour daily curfew, 200 hours of community work and 12 months' supervision.

They will be assessed for their alcohol use and must undertake any counselling or treatment as directed by the probation service.

- NZPA