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Flight from Manchester to Tenerife diverted to Lisbon after mid-air disturbance turns journey into an overnight saga
Passengers faced a much longer trip than planned after police removed several people from the aircraft
What should have been a straightforward evening flight from Manchester to Tenerife turned into an overnight ordeal for passengers after their Ryanair flight was diverted to Lisbon following disruption on board.Flight FR4332 left Manchester at 8.30pm on Thursday September 17, heading for Tenerife South Airport. It never got there. Instead, the Boeing 737 MAX 8-200 was diverted to the Portuguese capital, a diversion independently confirmed by flight tracking records, which also identified the aircraft as EI-HMS.
According to a passenger who was on board and later spoke to Canarian Weekly, the trouble stemmed from a group of women who appeared to be intoxicated and had been causing disruption during the flight. Once the plane landed in Lisbon, police boarded and removed a number of passengers, believed by the eyewitness to be somewhere between six and seven people, though neither Ryanair nor the Portuguese authorities have confirmed the exact number or whether any arrests were made.
Unfortunately for those left on board, the disruption didn't end there. Ryanair informed remaining passengers that the crew had run out of permitted duty hours and simply couldn't continue on to Tenerife that night. That left everyone stuck in Lisbon while new arrangements were made to get them to their destination.
The flight eventually continued the following morning as FR4332A, but not without one more hiccup. Some passengers failed to make it back to the aircraft in time, adding roughly another hour's delay before it could finally take off. FR4332A landed at Tenerife South at around 9.12am on Friday, bringing an already long journey to a close for passengers who had expected to arrive the night before.
At the time of writing, neither Ryanair nor the Portuguese authorities have offered an official account of what caused the disturbance, how many people were actually removed from the aircraft, or whether formal action was taken against anyone involved.
Image: wikicommons
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