Ryanair flight from UK to Canary Islands diverted to Portugal due to ‘onboard fight involving seven passengers’
- Portuguese police sources said seven passengers were involved in an altercation
A Ryanair plane en route from Britain to the Canary Islands has been forced to divert to Portugal after an ‘onboard fight’.
Portuguese police sources said seven passengers were involved in an altercation and one person had been arrested.
There has been no official comment yet from Portuguese authorities, but a well-placed insider said they were all British.
The plane left London Luton Airport at 8am and was due to reach Lanzarote at 12.15pm local time today.
Instead, the plane was diverted to Faro and landed at the airport in Portugal’s Algarve region around 10:50 a.m. local time.
MailOnline has contacted Ryanair for comment.
Portuguese police sources said seven passengers were involved in an altercation and one person was arrested after a fight broke out on board
Last month, three Ryanair planes from Great Britain had to divert to Faro for various reasons.
On December 20, a budget airline Boeing 737 landed at Algarve airport with 202 people on board after deviating from its original route from London Stansted to Lisbon due to a technical problem.
A ‘red code’ warning was issued, which resulted in 35 emergency vehicles and almost 80 emergency workers, including firefighters and civil protection personnel, being put on standby, although the aircraft landed safely.
On December 12, another Ryanair plane en route from Manchester to Tenerife South had to divert to the same airport due to a new ‘red alert’, with that incident also blamed on a technical problem with the aircraft.
And the Tuesday before, a Ryanair plane en route from London Stansted to Morocco landed in Faro in similar circumstances after the pilot fell ill.
A Ryanair spokesperson said after the December 5 incident: ‘This flight from Stansted to Morocco was diverted to Faro when one of the pilots became ill.
‘The aircraft landed normally and the passengers were transferred to an alternative aircraft operated by a different crew before continuing to Morocco.’