Unruly riders force plane to divert, land in Winnipeg

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This article was published 23/03/2018 (2219 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Five British nationals were arrested by RCMP after a flight from Manchester, U.K., to Las Vegas was diverted to Winnipeg’s Richardson International Airport on Saturday morning.

An airport spokesperson initially described the incident as “a medical situation,” but a spokesman for British holiday airline Thomas Cook Airlines said the situation was “never a medical issue.”

The airline spokesperson confirmed that “five disruptive passengers were offloaded” from Thomas Cook flight 2924 in Winnipeg on Saturday.

The flight was not a charter, the Thomas Cook spokesman said, although there may have been some chartered passengers.

He couldn’t say whether alcohol was involved in the incident, but said alcohol would have been served on the flight, as well as in the Manchester airport beforehand.

The spokesman described such flight diversions as “very unusual,” and said the flight arrived in Las Vegas two hours and forty minutes behind schedule.

The plane was met at Richardson International by RCMP, who escorted five men from the aircraft in handcuffs with the help of Canada Border Services Agency officers, according to an RCMP spokeswoman.

All five were “British adult citizens” and were arrested for “mischief and causing disturbance.” None of the men resisted arrest and no one was injured, according to RCMP.

Online flight-tracking information shows Thomas Cook Airlines flight 2924 landed in Winnipeg at 11:12 a.m. and departed at 1:27 p.m.

The flight refuelled and de-iced before continuing on to Las Vegas, according to the airport spokesman.

A 2017 investigation by BBC News found a 50 per cent increase in arrests of intoxicated passengers in U.K. airports and on U.K. flights between February 2016 and February 2017.

In 2016, members of the U.K. aviation industry unveiled a voluntary code of conduct for dealing with “disruptive passengers.”

— staff