A Ryanair flight travelling from Milan to London last weekend descended into chaos when passengers saw a man start to eat his passport. A passenger on board described the flight as “the scariest 15 minutes of my life,” saying that the incident began barely 20 minutes into the flight.
The anonymous source told the Daily Star they were on their way home from a holiday with friends to London Stansted when “15-20 mins into the flight, once the seatbelt sign was off, something very strange happened at the front of the plane. “Staff were notified and went to see what was going on at the front of the plane. Suddenly, the whole mood changed – no one on board knew what was going on; these people were acting weird.” One passenger watched in confusion as one of the men ripped out the pages of his passport and began to eat them.
According to the passenger, the entire plane began to “freak out,” by which point the partner-in-crime went to the other end of the plane to try to “flush his passport down the toilet”. A flight attendant banged on the door and begged the man to open it, but to no avail.
“This led to even more tension,” the source added. “The airhostess then made a public announcement that was so blunt and to the point. That freaked people out to another level. No one knew what was going on.”
The plane was then diverted to Paris, and the source described the descent as “the most terrifying 15 minutes of my life”.
Once they had landed safely, French police boarded the aircraft and arrested the two men, before letting the flight continue on its journey to London. The whole procedure took two hours and involved a full bag search, according to the passenger.
The source praised Ryanair staff for their ability to stay calm throughout the ordeal. “I think Ryanair were brilliant in handling it in a certain way. They gave out drinks towards the end of the flight as we were coming in over Stansted,” they said.
“It was really stressful but Ryanair handled it amazingly. I’m just really f****** glad I landed.”
The Express has contacted Ryanair for comment.
This event comes around the same time that a terrifying near-collision occurred at Nice Côte d’Azur Airport in the south of France on Sunday. A Tunisian Nouve tried to land on the wrong runway, coming within feet of crashing into an easyJet aircraft preparing to take off. Passengers on board the easyJet plane were waiting at the head of the runway to begin its takeoff when they heard the deafening sound of the incoming Nouvelair jet applying full power to avoid a collision. If full, the two aircraft – both Airbus A320s – would have been carrying over 300 passengers and crew between them.
