Ryanair passengers miss flights after 'someone flushed toilet when they shouldn't have'

A Ryanair flight was delayed and passengers en route to another destination missed their plane due to problems with a toilet with an accidentally flushed pipe

A passenger has told how a flight was delayed six hours at Dublin Airport as chaos ensued after a toilet with a ruptured pipe was accidentally flushed on board a Ryanair plane.

And the confusion at the airport with the plane to Amsterdam also meant some passengers missed their separate flight from Dublin to Naples, they reported DublinLive.

Flight FR3104 was scheduled to depart Dublin Airport started its journey to Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam at 3.30pm, but the expected journey of one hour and ten minutes soon turned into a six-hour odyssey, resulting in passengers arriving in the Netherlands after 11pm local time.

A passenger on the flight recalled the delays beginning as they queued to board.

He said: “The gate was supposed to open at 2:40 but we stayed there until half past two.

“I didn’t think about it much, it’s a normal thing to be a little late, but when we got stuck on the tarmac and weren’t allowed to board it got a little suspicious.”

Eventually, passengers boarded at around 3:45 p.m. and the plane began to coast before a pilot warning.

“The captain came over the radio to explain that the toilets on board were not working,” the witness said.

“There was a little fight at the top of the plane, I think someone had gone in and flushed it when they really shouldn’t have broken down again and the captain stopped after moving.

“We sat there for about 20 minutes as the pilot kept coming over the intercom to tell us there was no update. He said they were trying to fix the pipe from the outside and there were no other planes in Dublin reporting at the time.

“At some point, around 20 to 5, we were forced to withdraw.”

The plane dropped off the passengers and the new flight was scheduled to depart at 6:20 p.m., but that was eventually pushed back to 7:20 p.m. as a replacement plane had reportedly not arrived.

Then the situation worsened when more passengers arrived in the departure hall for a flight to Naples.

The witness said: “The gate where our flight was announced said ‘Gate closed’ and that the flight was delayed again – but there was a woman at the gate encouraging people to come forward to Naples to fly.

“The flight to Naples wasn’t on screen at all and she just had to shout over everyone in a packed lounge.

“Eventually people made it, but it seemed like a few people missed it. I believe there were two final boarding announcements but they were difficult to understand because of the noise.

“A woman came there and asked to be let in. She said it was an emergency and she had to go home, but the flight was long over. Her English wasn’t great so she didn’t really understand what happened. and she ended up in hysterics with the staff.

“A group of people our age, about six, got there an hour after it left. Another group on our flight almost ended up in Naples themselves as they just sort of strolled through.

“And an old woman on our flight has also gone mad for leaving her luggage on the plane – the plane we have not now boarded again. I don’t think she even took her bags off again.”

After the Naples fiasco, the departure gate for the Amsterdam flight was then changed again to an upper gate and another delay, this time to an 8:35 flight.

Eventually a replacement plane arrived and the flight was ready to take off until a flight attendant fell on the plane steps and needed an ambulance.

“There were two ambulances to the left of the plane and a group of flight crew at the bottom of the stairs to board at the front of the plane,” the witness said.

“A flight attendant had fallen over herself and fallen down the stairs. She must have taken a hit when we were told to look out for blood on the floor!

“We all immediately thought, that’s it, no flight crew now, we’re never getting out of here. It was the never-ending nightmare at the airport that we would always wake up to.

“But they were a different crew. We had the same crew as the original flight so everything was fine. The woman also seemed fine, she was taken to the ambulance but she was up talking.”

The flight finally left Dublin just after 9pm and made a smooth journey to Amsterdam.

A Ryanair spokeswoman told Dublin Live: “This flight from Dublin to Amsterdam (20 May) was delayed due to an issue with the aircraft lavatories.

“While Ryanair quickly arranged an alternative aircraft for this flight to minimize the disruption to passengers, delays at air traffic control slots resulted in a further delay prior to departure for Amsterdam at 7.35pm (local time) – 4 hours 5 minutes after the scheduled departure time.

Affected passengers were informed of the delays by email. Ryanair sincerely apologizes to customers for this unfortunate delay.”

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