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A group of unruly passengers on an easyJet flight from England to Spain's Canary Islands forced the plane to make a diversion and prompted police to intervene, causing an hours-long delay, the airline told Insider.
EasyJet said in a statement that flight 2011 from the United Kingdom's Manchester to Tenerife, the largest of Spain's Canary Islands, was diverted to the Canary Island of Lanzarote on September 29 "due to passengers behaving disruptively onboard."
The nature of the passengers' behavior was not immediately clear.
When the aircraft touched down in Lanzarote — which is just a roughly 50-minute plane ride from Tenerife — it was met by local police, according to easyJet.
EasyJet spokesperson Lottie Phillips told Insider that as a result of the incident, four passengers on the flight were removed and "offloaded" in Lanzarote before the plane continued to its final destination in Tenerife.
"As this is a matter for the local police now we aren't able to comment further," Phillips said.
It was not immediately clear what consequences the passengers faced.
Meanwhile, easyJet said in its statement that its "cabin crew are trained to assess and evaluate all situations and to act quickly and appropriately to ensure that the safety of the flight and other passengers is not compromised at any time."
"Whilst such incidents are rare we take them very seriously and do not tolerate abusive or threatening behavior towards our crew or other passengers," the airline said.
EasyJet offered its apologies to other travelers on board the flight "for any inconvenience caused."
"The safety and well-being of our passengers, crew, and ground agents is always easyJet's priority," the airline said.
According to data from the flight tracking website FlightAware, the easyJet plane landed in Lanzarote at 11:17 a.m. local time and took off for Tenerife just over an hour later. It landed at 1:20 p.m. local time, the data showed.
