A co-passenger had filmed the entire incident (Representational)
In a shocking incident, a Ryanair flight from the UK to Spain was forced to make an emergency landing after a group of passengers got into a brawl. According to a report in The Mirror, the flight, which was heading towards the Canary Islands, had to divert to Portugal.
Citing a source close to Portugal police, the report said that the brawl involved seven passengers and so far one has been arrested.
The Ryanair flight left the London Luton airport on January 19, at 8 am and was scheduled to reach Lanzarote, in the Canary Islands, Spain, at 12.15 pm local time on the same day.
However, it was instead diverted to Faro, a municipality, and landed at the airport in Portugal’s Algarve region at around 10.50 am local time.
A co-passenger who filmed the entire incident informed the Daily Mail that the group of men, seemingly drunk, were bothering the female passengers on the flight.
So when the incident got out of hand, one of the stewards tried to intervene. But they knocked him out. This is when the captain gave a warning for their unacceptable behaviour.
The report quoted the passenger as saying, “There was a group of men who appeared to have been drinking who were bothering some female passengers. When it started to get a bit out of hand one of the stewards tried to intercede and ended up getting knocked over. At this point the captain gave a warning over the tannoy that unacceptable behaviour would not be tolerated and if it did not stop we would divert to Portugal.”
The passenger added that the group didn’t pay any heed to the captain’s warning and the brawl continued for 20 minutes. Just after it all, in the next 20 minutes, the flight landed in Portugal.
The passenger said, “But the commotion didn’t let up and 20 minutes later we were told we were landing in twenty minutes with no further information. The man fighting in the video originally got off voluntarily but for some reason got back on the plane and was then forcibly removed by the police who put him in a headlock. This man was one of several who were removed.”