Passengers On European Discount Airline Stage Hours-Long Sit-In
A 2007 photo of a Ryanair Boeing 737-800 preparing for take off at the Altenburg-Nobitz airport in eastern Germany. Jens-Ulrich Koch/Getty hide caption
We've all had bad flights, but a Ryanair flight today turned truly ugly.
The flight from Morocco to Beauvais (near Paris) was diverted to Liege, Belgium because of fog. As the BBC reports, angry passengers staged a sit-in:
Roughly 100 passengers on board ended up spending a total of eight hours on the plane before agreeing to leave.
"It was a very tense situation," said Christian Delcourt, the spokesman for the Liege Airport.
"Some of these people were very aggressive, very rude."
According to the AFP, passengers said the flight left Morocco three hours late, then without any warning landed in Liege. The airline said the passengers were then going to be bused the 225 miles to Beauvais.
Bloomberg reports when the passengers refused to disembark, the crew walked out of the aircraft, "the toilets were locked and lights switched off."
The Telegraph says the passengers stayed in the plane for about four hours after landing. They report:
Stephen McNamara, Ryanair’s head of communications, said that toilets were locked and lights switched off to try and encourage passengers to disembark, while cabin crew only left when passengers became disruptive.