A Ryanair flight from Dublin was heading to Faro in southern Portugal, but was forced to change route and turn towards Spanish Malaga. It turned out that due to the strike of air traffic controllers, a Curfew was introduced at Faro Airport, and it simply turned out to be closed when the plane with passengers was ready to land.
As a result, 157 passengers on board were forced to take a bus and go to Portugal. It took another five hours, despite the quality European autobahns. At the same time, not everyone fit on the bus.
Angry travelers criticized the airline for leaving the plane without making sure it didn't make it to Faro before Curfew. There were accusations that the carrier “had no intention of taking us to Faro. They must have understood that if the airport closes at 2 am, and we took off shortly before 01:00 Portuguese time, they could not make it on time. resulted in an additional 55 euros.
A number of passengers noticed that they should have flown to Seville, and not to Malaga, because it is much closer to Faro.
Ryanair apologized to affected passengers and stated that “This flight was diverted to Malaga due to the Curfew at Faro Airport. The reason was the Air Traffic Control (ATC) strike in France, which was completely outside the control of Ryanair and affected all airlines operating flights to and from France, as well as flying over its territory.
Air traffic controllers strike traffic in France led airlines to cancel hundreds of flights last week, including Ryanair and EasyJet.
This is not the first time people have ended up in the wrong country.
The couple found themselves 2 000km from their destination after boarding a Ryanair flight to Greece instead of Spain.
A grandmother was blown away by plane 1 100km from her grandson's wedding from -because she also got on the wrong plane.
Another couple was supposed to fly to Copenhagen, but landed in Paris instead.