An easyJet flight to London was forced to divert to Italy for an emergency landing after a teenage girl threatened cabin crew and tried to open the plane door, according to reports.
Flight EZY8556 left Antalya, Turkey at 11.20pm local time on 27 December for a four-hour journey to London Gatwick, but just over two hours in it was diverted to Bari, Italy, data from FlightAware shows.
A passenger who was on the flight claimed that the plane landed in Italy due to security reasons after a teenage girl caused chaos onboard.
Nadine, 39, a passenger on the flight, told The Sun that “this 16-year-old was about four rows behind me and she was sitting next to a little girl who was about 10 started coughing and she told her to stop”.
“The little girl went to the toilet but the older girl followed her to the toilet.
"The girl kept having outbursts saying ‘get out of my face’, and she wouldn’t let her out.
“Then the mum went down and the teenage girl was shouting in her face,” Nadine claimed. “The mum and the little girl were crying so the crew walked the girl and her mum down to the to the front of the plane to get away from her."
The incident escalated after cabin crew asked the teenager to sit back down, but the 16-year-old allegedly started to “shout abuse” at the crew members, Nadine told the outlet.
"She was trying to open the door and she broke the handle. The crew members pulled her away and restrained her,” she said, with The Sun adding that she was referring to the plane door at the back of the aircraft.
"She was surrounded by all the crew members but one tried to calm her down.
“She started screaming on the plane and she threatened to stab a crew member.”
Nadine added that at one point the teenager also took off her shoes at threw them at passengers.
She said the flight was “absolute hell” and claimed the airline left passengers without water, the hotel they stayed in when they Bari was “a dump” and said there has been no compensation from easyJet.
The flight crew made the decision to land the plane early in Italy. In a statement to The Independent, easyJet said “Flight EZY8556 from Antalya to London Gatwick on 27 December diverted to Bari and was met by police after landing due to a passenger behaving disruptively onboard.
“EasyJet’s cabin crew are trained to assess and evaluate all situations and acted quickly and appropriately to ensure that the safety of the flight and other passengers was not compromised at any time.
“Whilst such incidents are rare we take them very seriously and do not tolerate abusive or threatening behaviour onboard.
“The safety and wellbeing of our passengers and crew is always easyJet’s priority.”
As the cause of the diversion was a disruptive passenger and was outside of the airline’s control, in line with regulations compensation is not due.
Easyjet said it did “all we could to minimise the impact of the diversion for customers” such as arranging hotels and meals for its passengers, and will be advising them that it will reimburse any expenses they may have incurred.
The flight was rescheduled to depart the following day.
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