Some 109 passengers were delayed for over six hours at Cork airport yesterday after a Ryanair crew member accidentally deployed the plane's emergency inflatable escape chute.
The flight, FR901, which was due to take off for Stansted at 9.20 a.m. did not leave until 3.30 p.m.
A spokesman for the airline said passengers were allowed back into the terminal building while an engineer was flown from London to deal with the incident. He said there was an engineer in Dublin but as the airline did not have a service between Dublin and Cork the quickest way to get an engineer to Cork was on its own London service.
"What we would normally do would be to see if there was an engineer available in Cork from another airline but there was none, none available to us anyway."
He said the engineer had to replace a part for the chute mechanism, to repack the chute, and the plane then had to be cleared following a thorough safety check.
He apologised to inconvenienced passengers. They were not offered any refreshments at the airport while waiting for the service to resume. "We don't do that sort of thing," he said.
