MEA Plane Witnesses Mutiny on Flight Bound to Beirut

W460

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.

Comments 2
Default-user-icon mo (Guest) 30 May 2011, 20:29

LOL, i'm so glad i wasn't on this plane. I've had a similar experience in 2004 when we were made to stay the whole night on board an MEA plane bound to beirut from heathrow - it was meant to take off at 8pm, ended up leaving at 6am the next day. Very oddly at 11pm the pilot announced that an Israeli plane had broken down and was blocking the run way. I find it funny that the blame was quickly shifted to Israel, it was later obvious that indeed there was no Israeli plane. Anyway, smaller scuffles did brake out which were only verbal and certainly did not require a security force to intervene.

Default-user-icon tima (Guest) 31 May 2011, 14:45

hayda jawna , hayda nihna