Passengers on a Ryanair flight from Malta to Birmingham say they were trapped for over an hour in a cabin with no air conditioning, with at least two people losing consciousness, and the airline's response has only deepened their frustration.
Eva Gregory, a 16-year-old from Derby, England, described a grueling sequence of delays and heat exposure aboard Flight FR7268 on August 10 that left passengers sick, panicked, and furious. The flight was scheduled to depart Malta at 5:40 p.m. It did not leave the ground until roughly 7:00 p.m. local time. In between, Gregory and her family say they endured conditions that no paying customer should have to tolerate.
Gregory told the Daily Mail that the ordeal began well before boarding. She and her fellow passengers spent roughly 30 minutes on a first bus with no air conditioning, then were moved to a second bus where cooling was limited at best. After that, they waited an estimated 20 minutes on the tarmac in the heat before finally stepping onto the aircraft, where things got worse.
Once aboard, Gregory said the lack of air conditioning was impossible to miss.
"It was like walking into extreme heat. We got on the plane but were sitting and waiting in the heat with no air conditioning at all for over an hour."
Passengers grew agitated fast. Gregory described people stripping off shirts to cope. Two passengers lost consciousness. Others vomited, though Gregory said she was not sure how many. She experienced nausea herself, and because she has a phobia of being sick, the situation triggered a panic attack.
Gregory shared video footage online showing passengers standing in the cabin while crew members appeared to attend to those in distress. On-screen text in the video alleged people were "passing out, throwing up, crying and having panic attacks." The incident is the latest in a string of alarming episodes involving the budget carrier, including a recent case in which a Ryanair passenger was nearly pulled from a Boeing 737 after a window shattered mid-flight.
One detail in Gregory's account stands out: she said the cabin crew tried to do the right thing.
"The Ryanair cabin crew absolutely did their best. They were telling them not to let us onboard until the air conditioning was fixed."
But Gregory said ground workers overruled the flight crew and loaded passengers onto the aircraft anyway. The cabin crew then bore the brunt of passenger anger for a decision they had tried to prevent.
"The other workers did not listen to the cabin crew and then the crew were the ones dealing with passengers' anger when it was not their fault."
Gregory's sharpest criticism centered on what passengers were not given. She said staff never offered free bottles of water, not even to those who had lost consciousness or were visibly ill.
"They didn't even offer free bottles of water to anyone, even those experiencing medical emergencies."
Ryanair's account differs. A spokesman told the Daily Mail that "the crew opened the onboard bars, allowing passengers to buy drinks and snacks if needed." The distinction matters: Gregory says nothing was offered free of charge during a medical situation. Ryanair says the bar was open, for purchase. Whether passengers in distress should have to pull out a credit card for a bottle of water during what Gregory described as a medical emergency is a question the airline did not address.
That gap between the passenger's account and the airline's official line runs through the entire incident. Ryanair's spokesman also said passengers were taken to the aircraft by bus and "remained in the vehicle for an extra ten minutes where air conditioning was available." Gregory described two separate buses, one with no cooling at all and one with limited cooling, over a combined hour. The accounts do not match. Aviation safety incidents have drawn increasing scrutiny in recent months, including a case in which a Ryanair Boeing 737 reportedly returned to an airport the day before a separate in-flight emergency.
The airline's full statement was brief. A Ryanair spokesman said the flight "was delayed prior to departure due to a minor technical issue with the aircraft and subsequently became delayed after a passenger became ill onboard." Engineers inspected the plane, cleared it to operate, and the flight departed Malta at 7:00 p.m. local time.
The statement did not explain the nature of the technical issue. It did not address the temperature inside the cabin. It did not respond to Gregory's allegation that cabin crew actively tried to stop boarding until the air conditioning was repaired. And it did not say whether the two passengers who allegedly lost consciousness received medical treatment, or what their condition was afterward.
Gregory said the air conditioning began working only gradually after the aircraft became airborne, meaning passengers endured the full duration of the delay, from bus to tarmac to cabin, with little or no relief from the heat.
The episode raises questions that Ryanair's two-sentence statement did not begin to answer. How many passengers were aboard the flight? Were formal complaints filed with the airline or with aviation regulators in Malta or the United Kingdom? Did any passengers require hospitalization? Ryanair has faced growing questions about passenger safety in other contexts as well. Earlier this year, a passenger aboard a Ryanair Boeing 737 gave a first-person account of being partially sucked through a shattered window at 15,000 feet.
Gregory's account paints a picture of a system where the people closest to the problem, the cabin crew, saw the danger and tried to act, but were overruled by others in the chain. The passengers paid the price. And when things went wrong, the airline's response was to point to a vague technical issue and note that the bar was open.
Budget carriers have built enormous businesses on the promise of low fares. Passengers accept smaller seats, fewer amenities, and tighter schedules. But there is a line between frugality and negligence, and trapping paying customers in a cabin hot enough to cause people to lose consciousness, while declining to hand out free water, sits on the wrong side of it. Other airlines have faced similar scrutiny over in-flight safety failures, including an Air India flight that dropped 300 feet mid-air, injuring 17 passengers.
Gregory summed up the experience plainly.
"The heat and witnessing medical emergencies made me feel uneasy. The whole situation makes me feel extremely angry."
When a 16-year-old on a family holiday has to watch fellow passengers collapse and can't get a free bottle of water, the airline owes more than a two-sentence statement about a "minor technical issue."
