‘People were sick and crying’ – rugby fan’s nightmare flight
A WALES rugby fan has described the “worst flight of his life” after the plane he was travelling in from Ireland made four attempts to land in Birmingham before abandoning a final descent.
Jason Allen, 47, from Pontarddulais, Swansea, had hopped across the Irish Sea to watch Wales’ defeat against the Irish at the Ariva Stadium in Dublin on Saturday.
After an enjoyable weekend in the Irish capital, Jason and his friends headed to Dublin Airport early on Sunday over concerns their Aer Lingus flight to Birmingham would be cancelled due to horrific weather conditions caused by Storm Ciara.
Despite a number of flight cancellations, Jason said he was surprised to hear the flight would be going ahead as planned and they left on time at 12.20pm.
But the group’s relief turned to horror after severe turbulence saw the pilot’s attempts to land the plane in Birmingham failing four times.
The nightmare journey saw passengers throwing up and in tears.
Jason said: “We were all happy to go home to be honest with you, but if we knew now what we didn’t know then I wouldn’t have got on the plane.
“Taking off was a bit shaky because of the wind. The journey was fine, but when we descended to go into Birmingham it was really shaky and as we were coming down the plane was shooting back up.
“People were being sick and quite a few people were crying and frightened because we were circling and dropping and experiencing full-on turbulence.
“I was annoyed because the flight in front of us to Birmingham was cancelled so they knew what the weather was going to be like.”
After a fourth attempt to land the plane failed, the decision was made to divert to Liverpool and a bus was put on back to Birmingham.
Jason added: “We landed in Liverpool three hours after we took off and we were kept on the plane for an hour and had to wait another hour for a bus. When we got back to Birmingham we had to drive home. I was supposed to be home by 4pm, but by the time I got home last night it was 11.30pm. It 100% put a dampener on the trip.”
Aer Lingus has been approached for comment.