MEA Plane Witnesses Mutiny on Flight Bound to Beirut
A Middle East Airlines plane with 231 passengers aboard bound to Beirut from Heathrow airport witnessed trouble last week, reported UK’s Daily Mail.
Trouble erupted after the plane had to abort a 5:00 pm take-off on Thursday, having already missed its original 1:00 pm departure slot.
With the Airbus A330 not given another slot until around 7:30 pm, disgruntled passengers argued with crew, raided the galleys and started “pushing and shoving,” name-calling and engaging in “fisticuffs,” said witnesses.
The newspaper said that passengers ‘mutinied’ on the flight from Heathrow after a thunderstorm left them waiting for take-off for almost seven hours.
Witnesses said the ensuing fracas resembled a scene from Lord Of The Flies.
A Lebanese woman passenger was said to have suffered “heart palpitations,” and a male passenger needed to be given oxygen.
Up to eight police officers boarded the plane at 5:50 pm but there were no arrests after the fracas and flight ME 202 eventually took off for Lebanon, apparently with all passengers still onboard.
Speaking from Beirut, one London-based businessman explained how trouble broke out, saying: ‘The atmosphere was very tense and a middle-aged man told the crew member he was an idiot.
“And that was when the pushing and shoving began. The captain came out once and I told him he had failed in his duty, to which he replied I should fly the plane.”
Another passenger, legal translator Jordan Lancaster, 45, compared the chaos to Lord Of The Flies, the novel about a group of schoolboys who descend into savagery when a plane crash leaves them marooned on an island.
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