Mass brawl on Ryanair flight forces pilot to make emergency landing. A family was asked to swap seat – Times of India

A Ryanair flight last week had to be diverted when it was flying at 30,000 feet as a fight between two families became a mass brawl — 30 minutes into the flight. Footage published by the Sun shows passengers screaming at each other on the Morocco to London flight. A witness to the shocking brawl said it all started with a passenger asking a woman to swap the seat so that he could sit with his wife and children.

The woman was sitting with her daughter and refused to swap the seat. The man was furious and started threatening the woman.

All this happened when the plane was readying to take off, the pilot unaware of the heat unfolding inside. After the plane took off, the woman’s husband came to her defense and then men started throwing punches at each other.

The airline staff tried to calm both sides but soon it became a massive brawl as one of the warring families was part of a larger group and all started chipping in the fight.

“Then a lady in the row behind started to have a panic attack because of everything going on. She was screaming and there were kids crying. It was like a snowball effect,” a passenger said describing the journey as a flight from hell.

In the mayhem, another person fell ill and had to be given oxygen mid-flight.

The plane was diverted and landed at Marrakech around 30 minutes after take off. Flight tracker website FlightAware showed the journey of flight RUK3034 as it took off from Agadir, a city on Morocco’s southern Atlantic coast.

The man who fell ill started abusing the cabin crew and said he was being treated like a terrorist.

The police and the cabin crew took two hours to remove the disruptive passengers from the plane while all the fliers were taken to a hotel where they had to stay the night. They were booked another flight the following day which also got cancelled.

In a statement to MailOnline, Ryanair confirmed the series of events and apologized for the ‘diversion and subsequent delay caused by a small group of disruptive passengers’ saying that this was out of the airline’s control.