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14th June 2018
03:08pm BST
A Ryanair flight that was leaving Gatwick Airport on Monday was delayed for a staggering 10 hours.
Passengers were onboard but had to get off again as the plane was forced to stay put because the tyre needed changing.
However, The Irish Sun is reporting that there was no one available at Gatwick Airport who could change the flat tyre and an engineer had to be flown in from another airport to change the wheel.
Flight FR9853 was supposed to land in Cork at 1:40pm on Monday but instead they only touched down in south of Ireland at 11:45pm that night.
At first, the delay was supposed to be two hours but messages kept coming through to passengers who were told that the take-off time had been pushed back further and further.
Unfortunately because @Ryanair flight FR9853 from Gatwick to Cork was delayed from 12:15 to 22:35 - my #AudioMo scheduled for Day 11 / 30 has been delayed - it is unlikely to take off until after midnight Cork time. pic.twitter.com/hvDazIBTBJ
— Paul O'Mahony (Cork) (@Omaniblog) June 11, 2018
One of the passengers told 98FM that: “There was an announcement from the captain that there was actually a nail in the front wheel of the plane.
“Obviously no one wants to fly on an aircraft that’s unsafe. So we sat on the plane for about another hour when they assessed the situation.”
The flight eventually took off at 10:46pm and landed in just under an hour in Cork.
Ryanair told Lovin Media Group in a statement that:
"This flight from London Gatwick to Cork (11 June) was delayed ahead of take-off due to the late arrival of the inbound aircraft, which experienced a minor technical issue.
"Customers were regularly updated by SMS text message and email (six texts and two emails) and provided with refreshment vouchers, before boarding the aircraft.
"However, due to a technical issue with the tyre, the departure was delayed. Customers disembarked, were provided with another set of refreshment vouchers and were again updated regularly by SMS text message and email.
2To minimise delay, an engineer was sent from London Stansted airport, who cleared the fault, returned the aircraft to service and the aircraft departed to Cork. Ryanair sincerely apologised to all customers affected by this delay.”
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