EasyJet passenger forces emergency landing after ‘threatening to stab a crew member’ in mid-flight outburst

An easyJet flight to London was forced to divert to Italy for an emergency landing after a teenage girl threatened cabin crew and tried to open the plane door, according to reports. Flight EZY8556 left Antalya, Turkey at 11.20pm local time on 27 December for a four-hour journey to London Gatwick, but just over two hours in it was diverted to Bari, Italy, data from FlightAware shows. A passenger who was on the flight claimed that the plane landed in Italy due to security reasons after a teenage girl caused chaos onboard. Nadine, 39, a passenger on the flight, told The Sun that “this 16-year-old was about four rows behind me and she was sitting next to a little girl who was about 10 started coughing and she told her to stop”. Story has details. The flight crew made the decision to land the plane early in Italy. In a statement to The Independent, easyJet said “Flight EZY8556 from Antalya to London Gatwick on 27 December diverted to Bari and was met by police after landing due to a passenger behaving disruptively onboard. “EasyJet’s cabin crew are trained to assess and evaluate all situations and acted quickly and appropriately to ensure that the safety of the flight and other passengers was not compromised at any time. Whilst such incidents are rare we take them very seriously and do not tolerate abusive or threatening behaviour onboard. The safety and wellbeing of our passengers and crew is always easyJet’s priority.” As the cause of the diversion was a disruptive passenger and was outside of the airline’s control, in line with regulations compensation is not due.<br/>