A campaigner has stopped the deportation of a foreign criminal by preventing the plane he was travelling in from taking off.

Hannah Gaffey, 26, encouraged fellow passengers to stand up as the flight to Jamaica made its way to the runway, with the resulting commotion forcing the pilot to abandon take-off.

Ms Gaffey, a University of Cambridge graduate who works in Norway, has previously campaigned online for asylum seekers to be allowed to work. She noticed the man being restrained by officers as she boarded the flight at Gatwick Airport. She asked a flight attendant what was happening, and claimed she was told he was being deported for doing “something bad”.

Ms Gaffey alerted her fellow passengers and said she contacted Detention Action, a charity which supports detained immigrants and was part of a legal challenge against Government plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.

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In a series of tweets describing the ordeal, Ms Gaffey said she found “allies” on the plane who “shared a feeling of injustice”. She wrote: “The BA staff were keen for us to sit down and stop talking about it. So, we stayed standing. The aircraft is not allowed to take off while people are standing. So we did that.”

Eventually the passengers sat down, fearing they would be “kicked off the flight”. But the criminal began putting up “more of a fight against the people restraining him”, Ms Gaffey said.

With the offender becoming more violent, the captain decided to return to the terminal, much to the delight of an “elated” Ms Gaffey. She added: “I turn around and the staff are no longer restraining him and he is standing up and smiling.” The man was then eventually led off the plane to cheers, it was said.

Detention Action denies advising passengers how to disrupt deportation flights. The Home Office refused to say the crime the individual had been convicted of and would not comment on the incident.

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