Leader Exclusive

A passenger on a flight from Dublin to Alicante-Elche airport arrived in Los Montesinos, Spain, on Thursday evening – after an EIGHT hours dilemma!

“We were scheduled to depart Dublin airport at 9.30am on Thursday morning – until a three hours delay, due to the French Air Traffic controllers strike,” the unnamed person told The Leader.

A hen party was scheduled to fly to Spain from Ireland to celebrate – until the latest strike action by the French Air Traffic controllers put a damper on their visit to the Costa Blanca south.

The Leader source stopped off at Bar Casa Pepe in Los Montesinos after arriving in the Vega Baja at 5.30pm on Thursday evening – having departed Dublin at 12.30pm.

Meanwhile a Ryanair flight delayed for FOUR hours ended in a fight on board – as tempers flared – once the flight took off.

The incident was filmed by passenger Sakib Ahmed, during a three-hour flight to Malaga from London Stansted, after being delayed for four hours, due to an Air Traffic Control strike.

A fight appeared to break out between four males – with an alleged punch thrown – while a female passenger stands between them.

A video of the incident posted on Twitter, said: “Man, I’m never going on a Ryanair flight again. It kicked off every 30 mins in the flight after a four hour delay already. It was a three hour flight, but felt like a direct flight from London to Australia.”

Sakib reportedly said, after news of further delays from the cockpit of the plane, the atmosphere on board was a lot more angry – as ‘tensions’ rose.

It was said three passengers that were intoxicated kept swearing and shouting abuse to the air hostesses.

In the latest strike action to hit France a statement from easyjet said: “We have been advised of a Strike in France starting on 19/02/2020 until 21/02/2020.

Some air traffic control staff are joining the strike action and therefore like all airlines, our flights to and from French airports, as well as these flying in French airspace, could be affected.

We expect that there will be delays due to the industrial action, therefore we advise all customers to check the status of their flight on our flight tracker either on our mobile app or website: www.easyjet.com/en/flight-tracker

Although this situation is outside of our control we would like to apologise to any affected customers for the inconvenience caused.”

Photo: A 3-hour flight to Malaga from Stansted, delayed 4 hours due to Air Traffic Control strike, ended in a fight. Photo: Twitter.