Mega brawl aboard a 747 bound for Mexico: emergency landing recounted by a TFC reader
Here is what happened in these hours aboard flight LH498 bound from Frankfurt to Mexico City
Lufthansa
Star Alliance
YYC
Inconveniences on board a flight can always happen: medical emergencies, technical problems, and passengers making trouble. Sometimes it's a physical issue That leads to a chemical alert, other times it's family quarrels, but much more often instead they are serious behavioral problems, such as what just happened to a TFC reader.
In this article:
Our Stan, a frequent flyer for the German carrier, was on board the Queen of Skies today, which is a Boeing 747 that took off from Frankfurt and headed to Mexico City.
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Flight LH748, at the time of writing this article, Is stationary on the runway at Toronto International Airport. where he landed following a violent brawl that broke out on board among some economy class passengers.
"Something happened while we were Iceland and Greenland when the commander made the first announcement," my friend from Turin tells me.
"Attention we have an impaired passenger possibly drunk, we ask all passengers not to intervene"
I must admit that more than once I have had emergencies on board, but never anything serious or that was not resolved by the providential intervention of a doctor on board. Never anything remotely comparable to what Stan is telling me via text message right now.
"After the first announcement, the captain made two more announcements to passengers. In the first he declared an emergency on board, and in the second he was asked if there was a doctor on board the plane."
Our Stan, sitting comfortably in theupper deck of the 747 heard or saw nothing of what happened on the lower deck of the Lufthansa Jumbo.
"I must say that at one point we were reminded of some of the scenes seen in the 9/11 movies or videos also because we were sitting right outside the cockpit door."
Fortunately, the emergency was resolved, but the pilots decided to divert the flight to the first airport that could safely accommodate the giant of the skies.
"We realized the flight would take longer when on the IFE maps the destination changed from MEX to YYZ, the Toronto airport code. - TFC reader continues - The captain also disabled the onboard wifi, making it difficult to understand on board what was happening."
As seen in the notifications on our reader's cell phone, App in the air the #1 app that we here at TFC recommend to everyone those flying, churned out all the updates in real time, only for Stan to arrive only after landing in Canada.
Once they arrived at the parking area on the tarmac, law enforcement officers were present and took the altered passenger into custody. "The brawl reportedly broke out in economy, a passenger of Polish nationality who was flying together with a group of 20 compatriots allegedly began arguing with neighbors, the argument escalated despite the prompt intervention of flight attendants."
From what Stan was able to learn it would appear that the passenger, clearly in an altered state, first assaulted an attendant and then other passengers before being restrained and rendered harmless.
New departure to Mexico City shortly.
The crew confirmed to passengers that once safety procedures are completed, and refueling is complete, the flight will resume to the final destination. Fortunately, Stan confirms that there would be no injuries on board, according to LH personnel.