Manchester to Dublin flight takes 11 HOUR 'trek around Europe' after Storm Isha causes travel chaos
22.01.2024 - 11:43
/ manchestereveningnews.co.uk
Passengers travelling from Manchester to Dublin spent 11 HOURS on board their Ryanair flight after they were diverted 500 miles away due to Storm Isha.
Flight FR555, which had been scheduled to touch down in Dublin International Airport at around 3.30pm on Sunday (January 21), was forced to circle over the Irish Sea multiple times before aborting its landing. Passengers were told they were heading back to Manchester and then the East Midlands before they then diverted to Paris where they waited on the tarmac for around five hours before they finally departed for Dublin.
Filmmaker Declan Cassidy, who chronicled his experience as a passenger on TikTok, told the Manchester Evening News he 'couldn't have imagined' the 'long trek around Europe' they had instead of what should have been a 35 minute flight.
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"We'd been looking at the following day's forecast the day before we flew,so we knew we knew there could be a disruption, but I kind of thought that we might be diverted and end up in Shannon or somewhere else and that would be that," he said. "I couldn't imagine the big long kind of trek around Europe that we had."
The flight was initially delayed at Manchester, which Declan said gave 'a sense that things weren't going as they should be'. The flight departed at around 3:30pm and circled the Irish Sea several times. "It was really wild, the sea was really torn, you could see it from so high," he recalled. "We could also see other planes circling around with us."
Declan said the pilot began to attempt a landing, but the wind was so extreme it brought back feelings of travel sickness he hadn't experienced since childhood. "I used to get carsick when