Spain hunts passengers who fled plane ‘emergency landing’

BARCELONA: Spanish police were searching for 14 passengers who fled after their plane made an emergency landing at Barcelona airport on Wednesday following a medical incident that appeared to have been staged, officials said.

They were part of a group of 28 people who left a Pegasus Airlines flight from Casablanca to Istanbul after it made a pre-dawn emergency landing at Barcelona´s El Prat airport. It was the second such incident in just over a year involving a flight from Morocco to Turkey during which a passenger feigned a medical condition in order to force an emergency landing in Spain with dozens fleeing the plane.

According to a source in the central government´s delegation in Catalonia, the incident began at 4:30 am (0330 GMT) when the plane requested an emergency landing because “a female passenger´s waters had supposedly broken”. When it touched down, the plane was met by an ambulance and three police patrols but “as they were disembarking the pregnant woman, a group of 28 people left the plane and tried to flee”, the source said.