By Daniel Moeglich and Marc Kalpidis, dpa
Frankfurt (dpa) – A Ryanair flight carrying 189 passengers from Dublin to the Croatian city of Zadar was diverted to Frankfurt-Hahn airport in Germany after a sudden loss in cabin pressure, police said Saturday.
Thirty-three passengers were taken to area hospitals. “The passengers complained of headaches and earaches, and suffered from nausea,” a German federal police spokesman told dpa.
Other passengers spent the night at the airport.
On Saturday morning, a replacement aircraft departed to complete the trip to Zadar. However, 22 passengers could not fly for medical reasons, and would be taken to Zadar by bus, police said.
What exactly happened on board the Boeing 737 was not known.
“Experts must now clarify that, but that can take some time,” the police spokesman said.
The plane landed at Frankfurt-Hahn Airport at 11:30 pm (2130 GMT) Friday night.
A passenger told German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that there was a not-too-loud bang and a sudden drop in temperature inside the plane.
Oxygen masks dropped from above the seats before the crew announced there would be an emergency descent. While there had at first been some panic on board, everyone remained calm in the end.
Many passengers experienced earaches, while others reported bleeding from their ears. One woman was carried away on a stretcher.
In a statement, Ryanair said the reason for the emergency landing was an “inflight depressurization.” The airline did not provide any details on the exact cause of the incident, nor did it comment on the health of the passengers.
“A pressure drop can happen from time to time, but it only rarely leads to real problems,” a spokesman for a German pilots’ association, Janis Georg Schmitt, told dpa.
It does not put the aircraft in any danger of crashing, and instances of a pressure loss are regularly practised in flight simulators, he added.
