Drunk Irish passengers start brawl on flight bound for Greece, pilot makes emergency landing

In another example of the kind of incident becoming all too common these days, a brawl broke out on board an Irish charter flight to Greece recently, which resulted in the plane having to make an emergency landing in Italy.

This one involved five drunk Irish men (read: stag party).

Witnesses say the fracas broke out first between two of them, though over what has not been made public. One started going through the cabin smashing overhead compartments. More joined the melee.

"They had a couple of drinks on them, they were extremely aggressive," one witness tells Britain's Daily Mail newspaper. "There were loads of girls and a couple of children and I think some people felt a bit threatened."

Obviously the captain did too. He diverted the flight to Venice, where a gaggle of Italian cops were waiting to haul off the men.

The flight, operated by Irish charter company Futura Gael, left two hours later and arrived in Heraklion, on the Greek island of Crete, without further incident.

It's unclear just how out of hand things became on board, or whether any of the 162 other passengers on board were injured. Futura Gael has issued apologies to the passengers for the incident and delay, and says it is conducting its own internal investigation.

There seems to be a lot more of these incidents happening lately.

Filed under: Airlines