Mid-air brawl forces UK-bound flight to return 30 minutes after takeoff

New Delhi,UPDATED: Jul 25, 2026 12:57 IST

A full-fledged punch-up at 30,000-foot forced an easyJet flight carrying 186 people to abort its journey to Liverpool in the UK and return to the Canary Islands.

Roughly 30 minutes into the flight, a dispute involving two groups of British passengers escalated into a brawl, the BBC reported. The captain deemed the violence a safety risk and immediately turned the passenger plane back to Tenerife.

"A group of about 10 passengers had started a fight on board, and the captain decided to return due to the danger it posed to the safety of the flight," an air traffic controller said.

In a statement, easyJet said the flight returned "due to a group of passengers behaving disruptively."

Police met the aircraft on the tarmac upon its arrival in Tenerife. A spokesperson for the Civil Guard confirmed that all individuals involved were British nationals.

"Eight people were removed from the plane who had been travelling together, two adults and six minors," the spokesperson said, according to Wales Online. "[It appears] a heated discussion started in the airport terminal between two families before they boarded the plane, and those problems obviously continued on the plane, which is why it turned back."

The remaining passengers eventually continued their journey to Liverpool later that day.

The high-altitude chaos comes as UK officials consider tough new measures to curb rowdy travellers. According to The Standard, officials from the Department for Transport and the Home Office are developing a proposal that could allow airlines to share information about unruly individuals, effectively banning disruptive passengers from flying with any carrier.

Under the proposed scheme, which remains in its conceptual phase, airlines would report disruptive passengers to the government. That data would then alert participating carriers if a flagged individual attempts to check in for a future flight, empowering airlines to deny boarding.

Currently, passengers banned by one airline can easily book tickets with another due to strict data protection regulations that prevent carriers from sharing blacklist information.

Public support for a crackdown on unruly flyers appears strong. A survey of over 5,000 British adults conducted in April revealed that three-quarters of the public favour creating a centralised database to ban disruptive passengers from all flights.

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