Ryanair passenger dragged off plane after demanding front row seat for being UN diplomat
Share:
A passenger who claimed he was a United Nations diplomat was seen wrestling with Spanish police as he was forced off a Ryanair flight. The unidentified man is understood to have insisted that he had a front row seat due to his status, but then refused to show his boarding card to flight attendants.
The plane was at Arrecife airport in Lanzarote and heading to Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain last Friday at 8pm. Footage shows the man arguing with police after the pilot was finally forced to ask them to come aboard and deal with the passenger.
He can be seen refusing to get out of his seat as officers in the end were forced to drag him out of the row. During the confrontation with the police he could be overheard saying: “I have paid to travel” and then “I am not going to accept this”, before he was forcibly removed. The flight was delayed a total of 40 minutes.
One of the passengers on board the plane said that after the man asked to be moved to the front, a member of the cabin crew asked for his boarding pass and he said his friend had it. “The flight attendant then asked him to please contact his friend, but he didn’t listen,” they wrote on Facebook.
After getting him to leave the front row of the plane he then tried to sit by an emergency exit which was also not permitted. And then the incident took another twist, according to the witness, who said that an airport worker came on board the plane to say that “there was a ticket which hadn’t scanned properly”, reported La Voz de Galicia.
