A massive row involving a heavily pregnant woman has caused a flight to Ibiza to be cancelled, leaving all passengers grounded and a wedding party without their much-needed transportation.
Siobhan Foster, from Newtonabbey, Belfast, claims she and her family were thrown off the EasyJet flight from Belfast to the Spanish party island on August 19 after an ‘abusive’ air hostess ‘singled her out’ when she asked about overhead lockers. Ms Foster, her husband James and their daughter were flying to Ibiza for her brother’s wedding when the alleged altercation occurred.
According to Ms Foster, the whole plane was turned back into the terminal at Belfast International Airport, leaving all 180 passengers in the lurch for several hours. She took to Facebook to say she would ‘never fly with easyJet again’ and accused the airline of ‘disgusting behaviour’.
Video footage shared on social media appears to capture a trail of passengers collecting luggage and bags on the runway, with a camerawoman heard speaking out against EasyJet and comforting Ms Foster who is shown in tears.
EasyJet, however, denies any wrongdoing and insists they are not to blame – they took action due to a ‘group of passengers behaving disruptively at check-in and then onboard’, before adding that the airline does not ‘tolerate abusive or threatening behaviour towards our crew or other passengers’.
Ms Foster claims that the family were seated in the ‘first seats’ after having paid for extra legroom in a bid to make her journey at seven months pregnant more comfortable. In her post, she acknowledged that readers may question if she was acting abusively towards the flight crew, but she insists she wasn’t.
According to Ms Foster, her request for help in finding a place for her baggage prompted an air hostess to reply with ‘You’re being abusive and it’s not my job to help you’. Ms Foster said the flight attendant then approached her to say ‘Look this isn’t our job to help’ so she replied with ‘Any other airline I’ve flown with has been more than helpful with me as I’m pregnant, etc’. It is then that she claims they were thrown off and the whole plane was asked to get off.
Ms Foster then alleged that although all passengers were made to leave the plane due to the situation, the vast majority were then reboarded and flew on to Ibiza.
An EasyJet spokesman said: ‘Whilst such incidents are rare we take them very seriously and do not tolerate abusive or threatening behaviour towards our crew or other passengers. We would like to apologise to the other passengers for any inconvenience for the delay this caused.
‘The safety and wellbeing of our passengers, crew and ground agents is always easyJet’s priority.’
Ms Foster and her family went on to spend the rest of the day in Belfast Airport. Her brother’s wedding went ahead without them, and her family finally arrived the next day having spent £1500 on another flight from Dublin.
As a result of the incident, Ms Foster says she is ‘so traumatised to the point I don’t know how I’ll ever fly again.’
It remains to be seen what action EasyJet will take to resolve the incident, but the video and myriad of witness accounts paint a precarious picture of how passengers are being treated by airline staff. Whatever the outcome, it’s clear that Ms Foster’s experience with EasyJet was far from what she expected when she set out to celebrate her brother’s special day.
