More than 100 furious Ryanair passengers staged a mutiny last night by refusing to get off a France-bound plane that was re-routed to Belgium.
U.K. newspaper The Daily Mail reports that the jet carrying mainly French travellers from Fez, Morocco was scheduled to land at Beauvais airport near Paris on Tuesday night but rerouted to Liege, Belgium along with three other Ryanair planes due to fog at Beauvais.
Passengers on three of the four planes disembarked and caught coaches for the three-hour drive to their original destination. The passengers on one plane did not.
A Ryanair spokesperson told the newspaper: “The majority of passengers followed crew requests to disembark for onward coach transportation to Paris Beauvais. Passengers on one flight, FR5222 (Fez – Paris Beauvais), ignored crew instructions and remained on the aircraft until requested to disembark by Airport Police. “
In fact, the militant passengers stayed on the plane for four hours, in what they described as harsh conditions. Passengers claimed that when they refused to get off the plane, Ryanair cabin crew locked the toilets, turned off the lights and left them on the tarmac.
Reda Yahiyaoui, travelling with his wife, three-year-old daughter and two-month old baby, told the Daily Mail: “We were all tired after a long journey and angry at being dumped 200 miles away in Belgium.
We just wanted to get back home so we sat on the plane asking to be flown to France. But they just parked the plane then turned off the lights and locked the toilets and left us with no food or water.
'The pilot also got off and even left the cockpit door open.”
Another passenger, Mylene Netange said: “We were staging a legitimate protest but what they did was unacceptable. They just walked off and left us there.”
A Liege airport spokesman said airport staff tried to coax the passengers off the plane by offering them food and drink in an airport lounge, followed by free buses back to Beauvais. “We said they could sit in comfort in a transit lounge but it was a difficult negotiation and they refused to budge.”
It was not until 3.30 a.m., four hours after touch-down, that the passengers finally agreed to get off the plane and board coaches to Beauvais.
But it may not be the end of the story, for an incident that some see as a ‘hijacking’ of a plane and others as the ‘kidnapping’ of 100 passengers.
We’ll give Ryanair the final words: “Ryanair thanks the majority of passengers who followed crew advice and apologizes to them for the inconvenience of these weather-related diversions. All passengers were coached onward to Beauvais. This is now a matter for the police.”
