Angry passengers were stuck in a 'chaotic' 24-hour flight delay in Tenerife on Saturday night after their plane returning to Manchester suddenly diverted, circled over the sea to burn off fuel, and then landed back at Tenerife South Airport.
Travellers jetting back home to Manchester Airport landed back in Tenerife just 30 minutes into the journey due to a 'technical issue' with the plane before being told they would be put up in a hotel until the next available flight, at around 8:00am on Sunday morning.
However, passengers were then told their flight home had been further delayed until 1:00pm, before another text informed them it had been moved to 4:00pm, and then again to 7:00pm - almost 24 hours after they were supposed to initially return.
Michelle Hamilton, who was one of the passengers on board, said people were “upset and angry”, including the elderly and families with young children, due to being kept waiting in the airport all day with 'no information', and another passenger, a Tenerife resident who prefers to remain anonymous, said he was really confused as he thought they’d landed in Manchester after he fell asleep before take-off.
Having eventually been booked back on a flight to the UK, passengers were told that they would be flown to Liverpool and then taken by coach back to Manchester.
Michelle told the Manchester Evening News on Sunday night: "They told us first of all we'd be on the 8am flight on Sunday morning and were being picked up at 5.30am from the hotel. But then I got a text in the early hours saying it had been rescheduled for a 1pm flight and then that didn't happen either. Then it was 3pm and that didn't happen. We've had absolutely no contact with Ryanair. Not one person has come to tell us what's going on so we took it upon ourselves to go back out to arrivals. A lot of people were upset and angry. It was chaos.”
She added that: "In all fairness, they got us back to Tenerife rapidly - but from then it was shocking. There are so many people here, including a young couple with a ten-month-old baby on special milk and they are running out. It's so poor, we have been in the airport all day. I am young and fit enough to manage but people have no money and have been left all day from morning until now."
Ryanair told the Manchester newspaper that the aircraft had to return to Tenerife on Saturday night due to a 'minor technical issue' and that the flight was delayed overnight after being inspected by engineers.
The airline, which apologised for the inconvenience, says the reason for the departure time being repeatedly pushed back was due to servicing being carried out on the plane throughout Sunday and that some passengers were eventually seated on another flight back to Manchester and others were flown to Liverpool and put on a coach back to Manchester.
