The air rage jury trying a plane passenger said to have wreaked havoc on a Boeing 747 at 35,000 feet was today considering its verdict.

Plumber Ian Bottomley, 36, allegedly injured three British Airways cabin crew, caused £30,000 damage and even invited a former soldier trying to restrain him to "step outside" high above the African jungle.

West London's Isleworth Crown Court was told that after a violent struggle he was finally overpowered, handcuffed, gagged, strapped down and sedated in a bid to restore order.

The seven men and five women of the jury spent an hour considering their verdict yesterday before retiring for the night, and were due to resume their deliberations this morning.

In his final address, defence counsel Warwick Tatford urged them to accept that what occurred on flight 056 from Johannesburg to Heathrow last January grew out of misunderstandings on both sides and "spiralled" out of control.

Bottomley, of Larch Grove, Witham, maintains he acted in self-defence after falling against a steward.

Before he realised what was happening, he was being handcuffed and tied down, he said, adding: "I thought they were going to kill me. I resisted ... it was survival instinct."

Shortly before the incident he had been ticked off for looking at pornographic pictures on a computer, but he insisted he is so short-sighted he did not realise what was in the pictures.

Bottomley denies one count of endangering the flight, one of affray, one of assaulting cabin crew head Michael Stevenson, and one of being drunk on board an aircraft.

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