An EasyJet flight from Turkey to England was forced to make an emergency landing in Italy due to an unruly passenger who attacked a man with a carrier bag, the Liverpool Echo reported.
Flight EZY3406 was scheduled to fly directly from Dalaman, in the southwest of Turkey, to Liverpool earlier this week.
Flight Radar data shows that the flight eventually arrived around three hours late after it made an emergency landing in Venice to allow local police to remove the passenger from the aircraft.
Passengers onboard the flight said that the woman was late to board the plane and “had quite obviously been drinking,” The Liverpool Echo reported.
Neil Houlker, who was onboard the flight, said that the cabin crew had to repeatedly go back to try and calm the unruly passengers.
“It was just general disruption, shouting, swearing, and drinking,” he told the Echo.
The pilot eventually made an announcement warning passengers that disruptive behavior would not be tolerated, he said, adding that he noticed the plane beginning to descend early, per the report.
The aircraft made an emergency landing in Venice, where four Italian police officers boarded the plane.
At that point, Houlker said the woman began shouting while one of her companions attempted to pin all the blame on her, which is the moment she became aggressive.
“She hit him over the head with a carrier bag, I don’t know if anything was in it. A bottle of vodka was also taken from them but there wasn’t that much left,” Houlker told the outlet.
A woman and two men were arrested after the plane landed in Venice, passengers told the Echo.
“EasyJet can confirm that flight EZY3406 from Dalaman to Liverpool on 3 October diverted to Venice where the aircraft was met by police due to three passengers behaving disruptively onboard,” a spokeswoman for the airline told Insider.
“Whilst such incidents are rare we take them very seriously and do not tolerate disruptive behaviour onboard. The safety and wellbeing of passengers and crew is always easyJet’s highest priority,” she added.
The Venice police force did not immediately reply to Insider’s query as to whether any arrests had been made.