Takeoff and stranding.
Over 80 passengers were stranded in France after a Ryanair flight departed without them, with footage showing dozens rushing the runway in a futile attempt to stop it.
The marooned passengers had reportedly been slated to take flight FR2640 from Marseille, France to Marrakesh, Morocco on Saturday, April 18, local media reported.
While originally due to depart from Marseille-Provence Airport at 10:30 pm, the flight was delayed because of a bottleneck at border control that was reportedly caused by a personnel shortage.
Things came to a head after the pilots reportedly decided to take off despite the fact that dozens of the passengers hadn’t made it through security.
“Only 50% of the passengers had passed through when the Ryanair manager came to see us, explaining that the door was closed due to the slowness of the checks,” said one of the stranded passengers.
He said “that the company wanted to get the plane out on time no matter what,” she added.
Determined not to get left behind, around thirty of the furious travelers decided to storm the tarmac to try and prevent the plane from lifting off, according to BFM TV.
In a clip seemingly ripped from a zombie apocalypse thriller, a stampede of passengers can be seen bum-rushing the runway with some of them shouting at airport staff.
At one point, the pilot pops his head out of the cockpit window as one of the grounded passengers tells him “it’s not good.”
In a separate video, a woman is seen yelling and waving her arms in frustration as her fellow flyers stand in front of the airplane.
Despite their attempts to stall the aircraft, it eventually took off at 1:50am, leaving 83 passengers stranded.
According to police sources, one female passenger was even arrested on suspicion of tampering with the fire safety systems to facilitate access to the tarmac — an act she later confessed to on camera.
Marseille-Provence Airport has launched an internal probe to review the sequence of events.
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