A 34-year-old man was arrested Sunday for allegedly using a mobile phone in an airplane in violation of the Aviation Law.
It is the first arrest in Japan of its kind since a January 2004 legal revision prohibiting the use of cell phones aboard a plane. The revision also outlawed smoking in aircraft lavatories.
Naoyuki Shimoda, a member of an organized crime group, is suspected of using his mobile phones March 10 in an All Nippon Airways plane as it was taxiing toward a runway for takeoff at Tokyo's Haneda airport despite warnings by its captain, the police said.
Shimoda, a resident of Hiratsuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, brought five mobile phones on the plane and initially turned them off after being told to do so by cabin attendants.
He later turned them back on, the police said.
The arrest was made because Shimoda took a threatening attitude by telling cabin attendants to "shut up" when they warned him against using the phones, the police said.