Man who flew passenger jets around Europe with no license fined 2,000 euros

Swede who flew jets without a license fined

OUDE MEER, Netherlands — A man who flew passenger jets in countries around Europe for more than a decade without a license has been fined by a Dutch court.

The court found that Swede Thomas Salme, 41, flew without a license and fined him 2,000 euros ($2,700), about a third of the maximum penalty for that charge.

The presiding judge has rejected prosecution demands for a three-month jail sentence, saying forgery charges were formulated wrongly.

Salme lives in Milan and did not show up for his hearing Tuesday. He was arrested at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in March on a tip from Swedish authorities and released two weeks later.

He was caught in the cockpit of a Corendon Airlines Boeing 737 shortly before it was to depart from Amsterdam for Ankara, Turkey, carrying 101 passengers.