Two Men Plead Guilty To Disruptive Behavior On Air Canada Flight

A bad year for Research in Motion, maker of the Blackberry mobile device, just got worse. Two company executives, 45-year-old George Campbell and 38-year-old Paul Wilson, both residents of the Toronto area, have pleaded guilty in a Canadian court to one count each of mischief after what's described as drunken, disruptive behavior forced an Air Canada flight from Toronto to Beijing to turn back and make an unscheduled landing in Vancouver.

Peter Fitzpatrick, a spokesman for Air Canada, tells the New York Times the plane was just “north of Alaska” when it returned to Canada. But another source who spoke on condition of anonymity tells the paper the plane was actually closer to Beijing, but the airline was worried that Chinese law enforcement officials would impound the plane if they continued to their destination.

As if the aborting of the flight after seven hours in the air wasn't annoying enough to passengers, some reportedly were involved in altercations with the two men before they could be handcuffed by the cabin crew. Air Canada adds that because the crew was up against duty time limits, the passengers had to be put up for the night in Vancouver before they could continue on to Beijing.

Research in Motion has said only, “Based on the limited information available at this time, RIM has suspended the individuals involved pending further investigation.” Neither man could be reached for comment. Following their guilty pleas, they've been ordered to pay fines of almost $34,000 each.

RIM calls its Blackberry Playbook mobile device "the world's first professional-grade tablet," but it has been a distant also-ran to the Apple iPad, criticized by some reviewers for its smaller screen size and poor software. Blackberry customers a few weeks ago endured a days-long e-mail outage when the company's worldwide server network crashed. The company's stock has fallen from about $63 to about $17 in the past year, a drop of over 70 percent.

Maybe it's time to try "professional-grade executives."

FMI: http://us.blackberry.com/playbook-tablet/