Multi-Passenger Brawl Erupts on RyanAir Flight: ‘There Was No Calming the Situation’
"The crew were unable to control [the unruly passengers] and the pilot stayed in his cockpit until the end,” a bystander shared
A recent flight from Scotland to Spain erupted into chaos after a fight broke out at 30,000 feet.
A video captured by a passenger on a Ryanair flight from Edinburgh to Tenerife on Feb. 19. shows at least three people shouting at each other and getting physical amid a heated argument.
The video, which was posted on Instagram by user @twotaboo4you (whose real name is Hannah MacDonald), shows two male passengers angrily yelling at one another from different sides of the plane. Ryanair confirmed that the incident is being handled by local police in Tenerife, according to BBC,
Of the unruly passengers, MacDonald told BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland on Wednesday: "It was as if they were the only people on their flight, their surroundings didn’t matter. It was insane. They were very drunk, it was as if they were on another planet."
She also explained to Newsflare that the chaos began when a few ladies seated next to the two men and a blonde woman asked them to “stop swearing so much and be a bit quieter.”
Things reportedly escalated to a shocking degree. "The blonde girl kicked off big time and started to threaten the ladies saying they would have them killed when we landed in Tenerife,” the videographer told the outlet.
twotaboo4you/ Instagram
Related: Passengers Jump in to Break Up Fight After Punches Thrown on Southwest Airlines Flight
MacDonald surmised that one of the men was the blonde woman's brother and the other was her boyfriend. She continued, "From what I'm aware of, her boyfriend's brother told her to shut up and then she went absolutely mental at him and they started to argue. Then her boyfriend got involved and hit his brother."
In the video, the alleged brothers can be seen yelling at each other in the aisle of the plane and even appear to scream at another passenger who tries to break up the fight.
Later in the clip, the woman can be seen getting in on the fight, shouting as one of the two men takes a swipe at the other. One of the men appears to bump into the woman and she lunges at him and tries to hit him with her fists as the other man attempts to separate them.
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One of the men can be seen angrily confronting other passengers as flight attendants try to get him to return to his seat and calm down. One of the flight crew can be seen creating a physical barrier between the couple and the other man.
"Any other passengers who tried to stop them got threatened also," the videographer noted. "The police did get called in the end as there was no calming the situation."
When the flight finally landed in Tenerife, they noted that it took 30 minutes for law enforcement to arrive and the passengers had to continue to listen to the trio squabble in the meantime.
twotaboo4you/ Instagram
"The crew were unable to control them and the pilot stayed in his cockpit until the end,” she noted. “We all had to wait on the flight until they escorted them off.”
Ryanair did not immediately respond to PEOPLE's request for comment on the incident.
A shot in the video shows the passengers cheering and clapping as police enter the plane. They appear to talk to some passengers and to the crew before the video concludes.
Unruly passenger incidents have been an ongoing issue, particularly in air travel and in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw a massive uptick in incidents.
In the U.S., the Federal Aviation Administration, reported a 492% increase in unruly passenger incidents between 2020 and 2021, when there were 5,973 reported. The number of incidents have since gone down by 59% in 2022 and another 15% in 2023, but were still above pre-pandemic levels for the last complete year of data.
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