Police had to be called out to a UK airport after a passenger who flew from Manchester refused to turn his phone off on the flight. The passenger became rude and abusive to cabin crew on the easyJet flight after being told to turn the device off before the flight was about to land at Cornwall Airport Newquay this afternoon (May 20).
Officers rushed out to the airport at 4pm to deal with the passenger - causing the turnaround flight EZY324 back to Manchester to be delayed by more than an hour. It is not known whether the man involved was drunk, while police did not confirm eyewitness reports that a stag party was responsible for the disruption, Cornwall Live reports.
A spokesperson for Devon and Cornwall Police said: "There was an incident at Newquay airport this afternoon. A passenger was talking on his mobile phone while the plane was landing.
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"When the cabin crew asked him to turn off as is the procedure during landing and take-off, he refused and became very abusive to the staff." The spokesperson added that while the man was spoken to after the plane landed, no arrests had been made.
Most aviation authorities require phones to be switched off on flights because they could interfere with signals on the plane or on the ground. Previously, incidents of signal loss in the cockpit or instruments malfunctioning while passengers' phones have been switched on have been reported by some cabin crew members.
