‘Mass brawl’ breaks out on easyJet flight from Liverpool to Tenerife as pilot forced to make priority landing on holiday island
- ‘Troublesome passengers’ have been taken into custody and will be deported to the UK
An easyJet pilot was forced to make a priority landing after a massive brawl broke out during a flight involving a dozen ‘difficult passengers’.
The outage occurred yesterday on board flight EZY19WZ en route from Liverpool to Tenerife, Spain.
After a priority landing, officers boarded the plane and took the troublemaker into custody for questioning. The persons will be sent back to the UK on the next available flight.
The brawl comes amid a hot button debate over tourism in the Canary Islands after Lanzarote’s president claimed the island was being saturated by British tourists and that it wanted to accommodate more ‘higher quality’ travelers from mainland Europe instead.
An easyJet pilot had to make a priority landing after a mass brawl broke out during a flight involving about a dozen ‘troublesome passengers’ (stock photo)
The outage occurred yesterday on board flight EZY19WZ en route from Liverpool to Tenerife, Spain
There was a massive brawl on board flight EZY19WZ yesterday, leading crews to request a police presence and a priority landing as the plane approached the resort island.
Spanish air traffic controllers confirmed the incident on social media, saying that due to the brawl, the flight’s landing approach was kept as short as possible.
Officers boarded the plane upon landing – and before anyone could disembark – so they could take the unruly passengers into custody, The Canary Weekly reported.
Police on the island could not be reached for comment early this morning, although normal procedure is to identify passengers deemed to have violated air safety so they can face fines.
Air traffic control said in its post yesterday, “All our support to crews and officials at airports, who are faced with these situations more often than is desirable.”
An easyJet spokesman told MailOnline yesterday’s flight was met by police because a group of passengers behaved ‘disruptively’ on board.
EasyJet cabin crew are trained to assess and evaluate all situations and to act quickly and appropriately to ensure that the safety of the flight and other passengers is not compromised at any time.
While such incidents are rare, we take them very seriously and will not tolerate abusive or threatening behavior on board.
“The safety and well-being of passengers and crew is always easyJet’s priority.”
The incident comes as tourism authorities across Europe are issuing a series of rulings ostensibly designed to keep tourists – and Britons in particular – out.
Tourist chiefs in Amsterdam warned British men to ‘stay away’ as part of a major new operation to clean up the city and rid it of rowdy and hedonistic behaviour.
President Dolores Corujo of Lanzarote last month claimed the island was saturated with British tourists and instead wanted to accommodate more ‘higher quality’ travelers from mainland Europe.
Mrs Corujo claimed that the island would be ‘following a diversification strategy to reduce dependence on the UK market’.
Similarly, the local authorities in the Canary Islands have airlines and passengers to comply with safety rules and regulations as the number of worrying incidents on airplanes seems to be on the rise.
The brawl comes amid discussions over tourism in the Canary Islands. In the photo: Tenerife
Earlier this week it emerged that a drunk passenger had forced a pilot of a flight from Glasgow to Tenerife to make an emergency landing in Portugal.
Jet2 said they are suspending the 55-year-old Briton for life, accusing him of being aggressive, consuming alcohol illegally, intimidating other customers and urinating in the cabin.
Holidaymakers were delayed overnight while the aircraft was thoroughly cleaned for their onward flight to Tenerife the next day.
An easyJet plane with 100 people on board, en route from London Gatwick to Agadir in Morocco, had to make an unscheduled landing in Faro in the Algarve on Friday after the pilot fell ill.
