Staff Reporter
VIDEO footage has emerged of an altercation on a Ryanair flight last Thursday, which saw the plane forced to make an unscheduled landing in Santiago de Compostela, in Spain’s northwestern Galicia region.
The flight had departed from Liverpool bound for Tenerife, but according to the Irish budget airline, “a passenger became upset on board”.
The crew of the flight advised air traffic controllers that they had a ‘conflictive passenger’ on the plane, prompting them to grant permission for landing in Santiago, where police and medical staff were awaiting the Boeing 737, which has capacity for 189 passengers.
The videos show one of the passengers, who is wearing a black shirt, trying to open the overhead lockers.
Read more: Two women pull at each other’s hair during vicious fight on easyJet plane
Cabin crew can be seen trying to stop him, until he slaps one of the male flight attendants across the head.
At that point, another passenger stands up in his seat and punches the disruptive man in the face, prompting cries of surprise – and some laughs – from the rest of the passengers.
The man continues to struggle with members of the crew, and according to press reports was later restrained using a seat belt.
Ryanair confirmed in a statement that the man was removed from the aircraft at the Rosalia de Castro airport by police, before the flight continued on to the Canary Island of Tenerife.
This is the latest in a series of similar incidents to occur on flights bound for Spain, after a 28-year-old British man was arrested after brawling on an easyJet flight to Alicante at the end of May.
The man reportedly tried to open the plane door mid-flight, and was so intoxicated he didn’t even realise the aircraft was in the air, according to The Sun.
And then in April, a flight from Glasgow to Tenerife had to land in Bristol Airport after two passengers began behaving ‘disruptively’ and started to fight, The Mirror reported.
