Two British women caused panic on a holiday flight from Greece when they attacked cabin staff with a vodka bottle and fought to open the emergency exit at 30,000ft, one screaming: ‘I want some fresh air.’
The drunken pair had to be wrestled to the ground and restrained with plastic handcuffs as astonished passengers looked on. The XL Airways Boeing 737 charter flight from the Greek island of Kos to Manchester was forced to make an emergency landing in Germany where heavily armed police hauled away the women, aged 26 and 27, to cheers from other travellers.
‘It was a hell of a scene,’ said a holidaymaker. ‘It was a nightmare. The crew were brilliant, wrestling them to the ground and slapping plastic cuffs on them. We all thought we had had our chips.’
As a safety precaution the pilot put out a Mayday alert and diverted to Frankfurt-Main, Germany’s biggest airport…The 26-year-old is likely to face charges of interference in air traffic and attempted assault and the pair will probably face a bill of thousands of pounds from the airline for costs incurred during the landing.
Too bad there wasn’t a safe way to let them get off – as they requested – at 30,000 feet.
I’ve not had the privilege of being drunk on a death flight.. Do people still stick to their religious guns?
I’ll betting the airlines will drop the charges or settle out, rather than face the embarrassment of prosecuting these women in a public court setting. You’ll see.
Was it one of those really little airline bottles of Vodka?
Makes me proud to be British….
Sounds like an episode of Absolutely Fabulous.
I posed this to An American Airlines captain friend, who informs me that there is a general rule of thumb in the US.
– If the pilot distracted from flight operation, by either leaving his seat, or even making an announcement – the FBI meets the plane at its destination and the airline pushes for 30 days incarceration and gets it.
– Since 911, if the plane is forced to alter its course or land, the perp typically does a year and a day minimum and they deal with DHS instead.
Bail? These days – It doesn’t happen – not until a lengthy background and sanity check is completed, which oddly takes a month or more.
If these drunken girls can open an aircraft door against the pressurized cabin at 30000ft …go for it.
Ain’t going to happen.
For all pressurized aircraft type you have to disingage the safety slide shute mechanism first, rotate the handle then pull the door inwards towards yourself then rotate the door back. Can’t be done whilst the aircraft is at high altitude…
The worst they can do is engage the safety slide shute inside the cabin…that will kill anybody infront of the door and make one hell of a mess..
we are trying to find those girls from the moment we saw the news.. may be they are reading the news about them so they can find us.. we are 26 and 27, drunk and we need some fresh air all the time 🙂
please find us :))