An Australian appeals court has ordered the release of a British tourist jailed for making a drunken threat to hijack a passenger jet.

English tutor Thomas Lilico, 22, of Darlington, will be released on Thursday, after serving two weeks of a month-long sentence imposed after he admitted making threatening comments aboard an aircraft.

Justice Glen Williams of Queensland Court of Appeal said the sentence was justified, given terror fears since the September 11 attacks in the United States. But he said Lilico should be released considering his youth, character and exemplary background, which had been testified to in references written by people who had taught and worked with him.

Lilico, who was on a working holiday in Australia, was jailed on January 2, the day after he took an aerosol can out of his hand luggage and sprayed the cabin of a Qantas Airways flight before it left Cairns for the northern city of Darwin.

An airline attendant also heard Lilico threatening to use a knife to hijack the plane. Lilico later told police he had drunk eight pints of beer in the six hours before boarding the plane and could not remember what he said.