Three easyJet passengers who needed help in a wheelchair were left stranded on the tarmac after the plane took off without them.
Liz Weir, a well-known author and storyteller, was among passengers who watched in disbelief as their plane reversed at Belfast International Airport on Friday afternoon.
The 73-year-old said she arrived at the airport at 10.30am for her 1pm flight from Northern Ireland to Edinburgh, where she was due to hold an event that day.
Mrs Weir, from County Antrim, needs a wheelchair due to a heart condition, meaning she had to wait for all other passengers to board first.
But as she was escorted to the stairs, they were pulled away and the pilot “shaken his head” and gave a “signal” to indicate he could not board.
Two other passengers were also left behind.
“What happened is absolutely discriminatory,” she told The Irish News. “And to make matters worse, the plane took off with my suitcase still on it.
Ms Weir told the BBC she did not arrive in the Scottish capital until 8.50pm due to a lack of seats on other flights – and did not get into the city center itself until 11pm.
She said: “I was upset because I needed to get on that plane to get to my concert yesterday, which of course I missed.
“People bought tickets and sat there waiting for me and I didn’t make it.”
The ordeal left both her and another stranded passenger in a wheelchair feeling “really, really stressed”, she said.
“You just don’t believe it’s possible,” she added. “But I also didn’t think it was possible for them to take luggage and not take a passenger with luggage.
She also wrote on X that it left her in tears. I cried. Many!’ she wrote. “And noisily.” Not good for stress levels.”
An easyJet spokesman said: “We are very sorry that flight EZY55 from Belfast to Edinburgh departed on Friday 21 June without three passengers who were accompanied by an airport special assistance provider.
“We quickly reached out to the provider and our ground handling team to understand why this happened.
“We do everything we can to help passengers, arranging flights to Glasgow and Edinburgh later in the evening to get them to their destination as quickly as possible, and our team looked after them throughout, providing them with food vouchers while they waited on your new flight.
“We will also process the compensation due to them.
“The health of our customers is our top priority and we are very sorry for the inconvenience this has caused.”
In another aviation nightmare, a British Airways flight from London to Texas last week made it as far as Canada before turning around and returning all the way to the UK due to a technical fault.
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