Ryanair plane diverted after seat-swapping brawl on ‘flight from hell’

A Ryanair flight from Morocco to London was forced to divert after a row over seat-swapping turned into a mid-air brawl. Flight RUK3034 was just over 30 minutes into its flight from the Moroccan city of Agadir to London Stansted last Wednesday (July 3) when a violent altercation broke out, forcing pilots to divert the plane to Marrakech.

It’s reported that tensions between passengers were high even before take-off after a man in his late 20s reportedly requested to switch seats with a woman so he could sit by his wife and young children. It's alleged the man threatened the woman, who was sat by her own daughter and refused to swap the seat.

The woman’s husband started defending his wife after the plane took off, leading to the brawl, DublinLive reports. Video footage shared online shows passengers screaming, pushing and throwing punches in the aisle as cabin crew attempted to intervene.

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"It was like the flight from hell. And it all escalated from that one passenger wanting to change seats," a fellow passenger told The Sun. "They were trying to punch each other. One of the families was part of a larger group so other passengers started to join in."

In the midst of the drama, another passenger onboard the plane fell ill and had to be given oxygen mid-flight. "A lady in the row behind started to have a panic attack because of everything going on. She was screaming and there were kids crying," the 36-year-old passenger said. "It was like a snowball effect. It all escalated from that one passenger wanting to change seats."

As the situation escalated, the pilots decided they needed to divert and flew to Marrakesh to offload