Former Korean Air Lines Co. vice president Cho Hyun-ah, who forced a chief steward to leave a plane over the way a flight attendant served nuts, will be questioned on suspicions of violating aviation law later this week, prosecutors said Monday.
   
Seoul Western District Prosecutors' Office said Cho will face questioning over allegations she impeded flight operations and used threats to force the head of the cabin crew off the plane.
  

In the Dec. 5 incident known as "nut rage" in South Korea, Cho allegedly ordered the chief purser of a Korean Air Airbus A380 jet traveling from New York to Incheon to leave the plane after her macadamia nuts were served in an unopened bag rather than on a plate.
   
The plane had begun taxiing when Cho asked it to return to the gate with some 250 passengers on board. The transport ministry says the incident delayed the plane's arrival by 11 minutes at Incheon.
  

Prosecutors had earlier called in witnesses for questioning and raided the headquarters of Korean Air Lines and its Incheon airport branch to collect evidence.
   
They said Cho's indictment appeared inevitable given the substantial evidence of verbal abuse aimed at the purser and a first-class flight attendant who had served the nuts.
   
Cho could face an additional charge of assault after several witnesses testified that she had pushed the flight attendant by her shoulder and prodded the purser's hand with the edge of a service manual binder, prosecutors added.
  

 The labor union of Korean Air Lines, meanwhile, condemned prosecutors' probe into other employees involved in the case as "illegal."
   
The prosecutors shouldn't treat the captain of the Korean Air flight KE086 as a suspect, the union argued in a statement put on its website, such as by confiscating his cell phone and banning him from leaving the country.
   
The Annex 13 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation states that the use of safety information for disciplinary, civil, administrative and criminal proceedings against operation personnel is "inappropriate," the union said. (Yonhap)