A BOOZED-up IT consultant earning £1.5k a week racially abused a female British Airways cabin crew member and got away with paying a small fine of just £400 to the victim.

Just days before he was found guilty at Isleworth Crown Court, Peter Nelson explained how he had "lost his job and wanted to move back to New Zealand" after racially abusing Sima Patel-Pryke on an 11-and-a-half-hour BA flight from Heathrow to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

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The 46-year-old who owns a £1.15 million five-bed detached house in Ascot became irate after being woken up by the flight attendant while flying business class.

The "red-faced" married dad-of-three reduced the stewardess to tears after he said: "You Asians think you are better than us, I don't want to be served by you lot, I've paid your wages for the last 20 years."

Nelson, who has been an external consultant for GlaxoSmithKline pharmaceutical company in the UK for nearly 20 years, "targeted" Ms Patel-Pryke before he was threatened with arrest.

The pilot authorised cabin crew to get a restraining kit ready to use on him and threaten him with arrest.

Judge Edward Connell said: "You plainly displayed a contemptuous attitude towards the staff from the outset, when Ms Pryke, simply doing her job, came to wake you in order to take your food order.

"You took immediate offence at her having the audacity in your view to wake you up.

"It was completely unacceptable and I'm entirely satisfied that it was contributed by that you had drunk a significant amount of alcohol during the course of that flight.

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"I accept this conviction will have profound ramifications for you and your employability so I'm just persuaded that this can be dealt with as a financial penalty."

Lauren Sales, in mitigation, said his wife was treated by paramedics in an ambulance for stress at the court after seeing national press reports of the case.

She added: "He has lost his job, his children are coming out of their school, they talked earlier between the two of them of considering moving back to New Zealand because of the ramifications."

Michael Tanney, prosecuting, said: "It's no mere mischief to say he bullied and ranted and shouted.

"At one point, after a sustained targeting of her, she begins to back away in fright and became tearful."

Mr Tanney said Nelson's claims that he never used "racist language" and they were a "conspiracy theory".

Ms Sales, in her closing submissions to the trial, said: "Mr Nelson accepts he was tired, petulant, churlish.

"He said, 'He didn't want that one serving him, he wanted another one' - maybe words that you and I might not use to speak to cabin crew, but certainly not racist.

"The prosecution put it to Mr Nelson, 'oh, you were drunk - that's why you acted in this way,' but we know not a single one of the prosecution witnesses said Mr Nelson was slurring. They did say he had the boozy breath.

"It wasn't white one, it was as Mr Nelson explained, he only wanted to be served by 'her'."

Peter Nelson was ordered to pay a fine of £2,000, a victim surcharge of £170, the victim £400 and £3,500 to the prosecution.