A Ryanair flight was hit by travel chaos after a toilet with a cracked pipe on board was flushed by accident.
The FR3104 flight from Dublin to Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam was due to depart at 3.30pm on Friday and the journey was expected to be around one hour and ten-minutes. However, a passenger on board said "someone flushed a toilet when they really shouldn't have", which meant the plane didn't arrive in the Netherlands until 11pm.
The six hour delay sparked confusion at the airport, which meant some passengers on board missed a separate flight from Dublin to Naples. One passenger told Dublin Live how they started to get suspicious something was wrong when they were still standing on the tarmac at Dublin Airport when the flight was due to take off.
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He said: "We could see flight crew and some lads in high-viz going up and down the plane quickly. One lady was shouting out at us on the tarmac little things to keep us occupied, like have your boarding pass ready and put your masks on, but it seemed like she was stalling."
Eventually passengers got on at around 3:45pm, and the aircraft began to taxi out seemingly without issue. But a warning message from the captain put the brakes on the already-delayed journey.
The holidaymaker added: "The captain came over the radio to explain that the toilets weren't working on-board. There was a bit of a fight at the top of the plane, I think someone had gone in and flushed it when they really shouldn't have.
"One of the flight crew said there was a cracked pipe, which they had patched up but had broken again, and the captain pulled up after he had started moving. We were left sitting there for about 20 minutes as the pilot kept coming over the intercom to tell us there was no update.
"He said they were trying to fix the pipe from outside, and that there was no other planes in Dublin at that time to transfer to. Eventually at about 20 to 5, we were forced back off."
The aircraft dropped the passengers off at a different departure gate to the one they had got on at. The new flight was set to take off at 6:20pm, but that was eventually delayed to 7:20pm as a replacement aircraft had reportedly not arrived.
And the sudden influx of passengers into the departure lounge wreaked havoc for another, unrelated flight. The witness said: "The gate where our flight was displayed said "gate closed" and that the flight had gotten delayed again - but there was a woman at the gate encouraging people to come forward to fly to Naples.
"The Naples flight wasn't displayed on the screen at all, and she just had to shout over everyone in a lounge that was packed to bursting. Eventually people copped it, but it seemed like a good few people missed it. I think there were two announcements for final boarding, but they were difficult to make out over the noise.
"One woman got there and begged to be let on, saying it was an emergency and that she had to get home, but the flight was long gone. Her English wasn't great, so she didn't really understand what had happened, and she ended up in hysterics at the staff.
"One group of people around our age, about six of them, got there an hour after it was gone. Another group on our flight nearly ended up in Naples themselves when they just strolled through somehow.
"And an old woman on our flight also went mad because she left her luggage on the plane - the plane we now weren't getting back on. I don't think she got her bags back off at all."
After the Naples fiasco, the departure gate for the Amsterdam flight was then changed again to an upstairs gate, leading to another mass migration of holidaymakers - and another delay, this time to an 8:35 flight. Eventually, a replacement aircraft did arrive, reportedly from London, and the flight was all ready to go.
The flight finally departed Dublin just after 9pm, and made a smooth journey over to Amsterdam. The holidaymaker said: "I'm a nervous flier, and what I'd taken to help my nerves had long worn off, but I have to say after all that, the flight was probably the best part of the day,
"Everyone on board could do nothing but laugh at how ridiculous it all got. It was just one unfortunate event after another, you couldn't make it up "Every time another thing happened one of the lads said "it can't get any worse" - he's some jinx. He actually said before we got on the plane that it was only up from here, so I was convinced he'd doomed us all to death.
"In the amount of time we were delayed on the tarmac in Dublin we could have flown over and gone to the bathroom as much as we'd like.
"Thankfully we got over fine and had a great weekend - until we got to Schiphol on Monday to fly home. That flight was delayed taking off by an hour due to a ground staff issue. Next time, I'm getting a boat and a train."
A Ryanair spokeswoman told Dublin Live: “This flight from Dublin to Amsterdam (20 May) was delayed due to an issue with the aircraft lavatories.
"While Ryanair quickly arranged an alternative aircraft for this flight to minimise the disruption to passengers, Air Traffic Control slot delays led to a further delay before departing for Amsterdam at 19.35 (local time) – 4hrs 5mins after its scheduled departure time.
"Affected passengers were notified of the delays via email. Ryanair sincerely apologises to customers for this unfortunate delay."
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