South Korea’s top court confirmed on Thursday a lower court’s ruling that sentenced Cho Hyun-ah, former vice president of Korea Air, to 10 months in prison, suspended for two years, for disrupting a plane‘s operations in the so-called “nut rage” case.

Cho, the eldest daughter of the airline’s chairman Cho Yang-ho, was sent to trial in January 2015 for assaulting a chief cabin crew, forcing the taxiing plane back to the gate in New York and disrupting the plane’s operations.

In February 2015, the lowest court sentenced Cho to a one-year jail term, acknowledging all charges including altering the flight route. 

In May 2015, the appeals court cleared her of causing a change in the flight path, reducing her sentence to 10 months with a two-year suspension.

The top court agreed with the appeals court’s ruling.

In December 2014, Cho, who was then in charge of in-flight service at Korean Air, was on an Incheon-bound flight departing from New York‘s John F. Kennedy International Airport when she allegedly became upset about the way her macadamia nuts were served -- in an unopened bag, not on a plate. 

In a rage over what she viewed as “poor cabin service,” Cho verbally abused the chief steward Park Chang-jin, made him kneel and jabbed his hand with a folder and ordered the flight to return to the terminal gate to deplane Park.

The incident immediately triggered public outcry over the long-held privileges of a handful of family-owned conglomerates that dominate the national economy, making it one of the most high-profile cases in Korea. 

(laeticia.ock@heraldcorp.com)