Angry travellers refuse to leave plane

MORE than 100 angry Ryanair passengers refused to leave an aircraft last night after their scheduled flight to Beauvais in France was diverted to Liege in Belgium.

Many of the passengers spent almost four hours in the dark on board the Boeing aircraft after insisting the plane be flown back to France.

The pilot and his crew left the plane one hour after landing, but not before they closed the toilet doors and switched off all the lights on the aircraft.

The passengers, who were mostly French, were eventually persuaded by local police to leave the aircraft and take a bus for the 350km journey to their original destination.

Ryanair said the plane was one of four aircraft that had to be diverted to Liege because Beauvais was forced to close due to fog.

A Ryanair spokesperson said passengers on three of the flights had followed the crews’ requests to disembark to enable them to travel on a coach transfer to the French airport.

However, he admitted passengers on the flight from Fez in Morocco had ignored the crew’s instruction to move to the transit lounge in the terminal and remained on the aircraft.

Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary yesterday criticised the police in Liege for their handling of the situation.

A spokesperson for Liege Airport admitted many of the passengers had been “very aggressive”.