Ryanair Flight Diverted: Passengers Stranded Overnight in Toulouse After Marrakech Storm

The journey first got off to a very bad start, with a delay of nearly an hour at "Marrakech-Ménara" Airport. While the landing was supposed to take place in Bordeaux, the weather forced the pilot to change course and head for "Toulouse-Blagnac" Airport. "When the plane arrived in Bordeaux, it was the storm. Already, if we had left on time, we might have avoided it, but anyway... We turned around above it for a good half hour. The captain offered us Toulouse," explains a passenger to the Midi Libre newspaper. The promised half hour turned into several hours in reality.

There was first the wait, outside, for a bus that would never come, before re-entering the airport, because of the cold. The firefighters and the police then take them in charge and provide blankets, before they are provided with a breakfast. Around 4 a.m., the "Ryanair" assistant arrives at the airport and tells them that she was not even aware of their presence (and their ordeal) on site.

The airline sends an apology email to the passengers, blaming "certain exceptional situations [that] prove to be beyond [its] control and affect [its] flight management". It claimed to be doing everything "to minimize the inconvenience caused by the disruption of a flight, while complying with Directive EC 261/2004".

For the airport director, it’s just bad luck. "We are a diversion airport and we have a reception structure that was triggered to disembark the passengers. Everything went well, but the difficulty arose in the management of the buses and in finding means of transport to reroute the passengers to Bordeaux [...]. The company and its assistant looked for buses, but it was impossible to find any and the information was poorly managed. Meanwhile, the travelers waited a good part of the night before they could be provided with emergency beds. This morning, from 4:30 am, the procedure started again, but on Wednesday, all the buses in the region were engaged in school transportation. It’s a stroke of bad luck, an unfortunate set of circumstances."