Irish budget carrier Ryanair’s plane full of passengers landed in the wrong country, 400 kilometers from the correct destination.
A Ryanair flight from Dublin was heading to Faro in southern Portugal but was forced to change route and turn towards Spanish Malaga. It turned out that due to the strike of air traffic controllers at Faro Airport, a Curfew was introduced, and it simply turned out to be closed when the plane with passengers was ready to land.
As a result, 157 passengers on board were forced to board a bus and go to Portugal. It took another five hours, despite the quality of European autobahns. However, not everyone could fit on the bus.
Angry travelers criticized the airline for leaving the plane without making sure it didn’t make it to Faro before Curfew. There were accusations that the carrier “had no intention of taking us to Faro. They had to understand that if the airport closed at 2 am, and we flew out shortly before 01:00 Portuguese time, they could not make it on time.
At the last stage of the journey, I had to take a taxi, which, at a nightly rate, resulted in an additional 55 euros.
Several passengers have noticed that they should have flown to Seville and not to Malaga because it is much closer to Faro.
Ryanair apologized to affected passengers and stated that “this flight was diverted to Malaga due to the Curfew at Faro Airport. The reason was the Air Traffic Control (ATC) strike in France, which was completely outside the control of Ryanair and affected all airlines flying to and from France, as well as flying over its territory.”
An air traffic controller strike in France led airlines to cancel hundreds of flights last week, including Ryanair and EasyJet.
This is not the first time people have ended up in a different country than they were flying to.
The couple found themselves 2,000 kilometers from their destination after boarding a Ryanair flight to Greece instead of Spain.
A grandmother was blown away by a plane 1,100 km from her grandson’s wedding because she, too, got on the wrong plane.
Another pair was supposed to fly to Copenhagen but landed in Paris instead.