More Turbulence for Travellers to Morocco

Regular View from Fez readers will remember the story a month ago when more than 100 furious passengers refused to leave a Ryanair flight that was re-routed to Belgium. The jet carrying mainly French travellers from Fez in Morocco was supposed to have landed at Beauvais airport near Paris but was delayed by weather. But because it took off three hours late, by the time it reached Beauvais, the airport had closed. When it landed at the southern Belgian city of Liege, the militant travellers staged a four-hour sit-in, demanding to be taken back to France. Passengers claimed on that occasion, Ryanair cabin crew locked the toilets, turned off the lights and left them on the tarmac for four hours.

Now we learn that more than 100 plane passengers staged a mutiny when the captain announced some unscheduled stops. The Moroccan budget airline Jet4You flight had been due to make a 90-minute journey from Toulouse to Casablanca. Unfortunately, when the captain told the 137 passengers the plane would be stopping at Bordeaux and Lyon en route - adding four hours to the journey - the travellers refused to sit and buckle their seatbelts, leaving the plane stuck on the runway all night.

A report published by The Mail Online says And rather than reason with the paying customers, the captain simply turned off the lights and heating in the jet and left the passengers inside. According to Majette Ouri, who was travelling with her two children,'It was a total disgrace. We bought tickets for a direct flight taking less than two hours. But once they had us on board, they said we'd be making two unscheduled stops and taking six hours to get to Casablanca.'

According to Toulouse airport officials, 52 of the 137 passengers asked to get off the plane during the night while 85 were still on the aircraft on Sunday morning. Jet4You said it would transport the passengers to Casablanca on a direct flight at 6pm on Sunday, and had found another means of collecting people stranded elsewhere in France.