Scottish police called to calm and feed rioting Ryanair passengers

Once again, Irish low cost carrier Ryanair is in the news with a story involving passenger mistreatment. Yesterday, police were called to assist in calming 168 passengers on a Ryanair plane at Prestwick airport in the UK. The plane was bound for Girona, Spain, but had been stuck on the ground for six hours.

With a wait of that length, the passengers were naturally becoming quite annoyed, but to make matters worse, the flight crew were not willing/able to serve any food or drinks. Because of EU tax laws, the bar carts on the plane are sealed until the plane is airborne, which meant passengers would have to sit the wait out without anything to drink.

Since Ryanair is a pay-for-everything airline, passengers are not allowed to bring their own food or drinks on board, and at the six hour mark, this proved to be too much, and some passengers began to riot. When local police arrived, they didn’t arrest anyone, and did the right thing – they went into the airport and purchased water and chocolate for the agitated passengers.

Ryanair apologized for the incident, blaming striking French air traffic controllers for the delay. Still, it may be a good idea to stock an unsealed bar tray on their planes, because keeping passengers locked on board a plane for six hours without anything to eat or drink takes customer service to new lows. Then again, Ryanair does seem to excel in finding those lows whenever they can.

[Image credit: AFP/Getty Images]