‘ABSOLUTE HELL:’ Teen passenger snaps at EasyJet crew over girl’s coughing fit

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An EasyJet pilot was forced to make an emergency landing after one of his passengers allegedly assaulted a member of the cabin crew and tried to open the plane door mid-flight.
The flight from Turkey to London Gatwick Airport had to be diverted to Bari, Italy, after a young female passenger lost it over a 10-year-old girl’s apparent loud coughing.
Nadine, 39, and her daughter Jernai, 19, were heading home after their Turkish vacation and “were all nice and relaxed, but then it turned to hell on the flight home,” the woman told the U.K. Sun.
She overheard a teenage passenger seated a few rows back telling the girl next to her to stop coughing.
“The little girl went to the toilet, but the older girl followed her to the toilet,” Nadine recounted, claiming the teen kept shouting in the girl’s face.
The coughing girl’s mother tried to diffuse the situation while crew members confronted the cough complainer, but the teen repeatedly “ignored requests of aircraft staff to go back to her seat and instead shouted abuse.”
That’s when the teenager stormed to the back of the plane.
“She was trying to open the door and she broke the handle,” Nadine claimed, adding that crew members pulled her away and restrained her.
“At one point she took off her shoes and threw them at a passenger. Everyone was so nervous,” but she said crew members eventually got the disruptive passenger, who was believed to be travelling with her mother and grandmother, to sit down.
For safety reasons, however, the pilot announced they would be making an emergency landing.
Nadine told the U.K. Sun that upon arriving in Bari, they were greeted by police who questioned passengers and eventually arrested the teen.
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However, the nightmare continued for Nadine and daughter, who were “horrified” by their accommodations, which were “freezing cold” because the radiator didn’t work. There was also mould in the bathroom and on the floor, they slept in “filthy” single beds and had to drink “misty water” from the tap because the airline left passengers without water.
Nadine added that her daughter is afraid to travel again after being “traumatized by the experience.
“It was absolute hell,” she said, claiming she sent the airline an email but had not received a response.
“EasyJet has not apologized. There’s been no compensation.”
The airline, however, issued a statement to the U.K. Sun regarding Flight EZY8556 being diverted to Bari “due to a passenger behaving disruptively onboard.”
After the crew “acted quickly and appropriately to ensure that the safety of the flight and other passengers was not compromised at any time,” the entire incident left the crew “feeling unfit to operate,” resulting in the flight being delayed overnight.
“While this was outside of our control, we are sorry for the inconvenience this will have caused,” the statement said.
“We did all we could to minimize the impact of the diversion, providing hotel accommodation and meals. We have advised customers we will reimburse any expenses incurred.”
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