and negligently endangering" a British Airways flight carrying 91 passengers from Madrid to Manchester after he ignored repeated requests from the crew to switch off his phone. "You had no regard for the alarm that would be caused to passengers by your stubborn and ignorant behaviour," Judge Anthony Ensor told Whitehouse at Manchester crown court. The sentence in this unprecedented case should serve as a warning that mobile phone use on planes, which is is illegal in Germany and the United States, would be treated as seriously as violence on board aircraft, Ensor said. Although Whitehouse, from Mansfield in northern England, made no airborne calls, aviation experts told a three-day trial that radio waves from the phone could have sparked an explosion or affected the Boeing 737‘s navigational systems as it flew at 31,000 feet. Whitehouse, who was sitting over the aircraft‘s wing fuel tanks, said he had just been preparing a text message to send on his arrival in Manchester but despite warnings from the pilot and crew he kept his phone on.