Jet2 pilot suffers ‘heart attack’ at 30,000ft in emergency landing horror | World | News
A Jet2 pilot suffered a suspected heart attack while flying Brits from Tenerife to Birmingham. The plane had to make an emergency landing in Portugal following a medical incident at an altitude of 30,000 ft.
According to witnesses, some stewardesses on the flight were in tears as they frantically asked passengers if there was anyone with medical training. After the plane with 220 passengers landed in Porto at 2.11 in the morning on Friday, May 22, paramedics took action to treat the pilot. He was later taken to hospital while passengers had to wait 13 hours at Francisco Sa Carneiro airport before returning to the UK.
A passenger told Sun: “My wife and I were sleeping when we woke up from the chaos. The lights started flashing and the stewardesses, visibly upset, were looking for a doctor.
“Our two-year-old started crying, as did many other children on the plane, because the plane was landing too quickly for an emergency landing.”
A second passenger told the publication they were “stranded” in Portugal without accommodation for nearly 13 hours. Due to the pilot’s condition, Jet2 flew a second pilot from Manchester to help them return home later in the day.
The airline has offered passengers free changes to a Jet2 flight to any of 14 UK destinations next week. They also apologized to those affected by the outage.
A Jet2 spokesman said: “Flight LS1266 from Tenerife to Birmingham was diverted to Porto on Thursday 21 May due to one of the pilots feeling unwell.
“At no point was safety compromised and customers subsequently continued their journey. We would like to apologize to our customers for this unforeseen delay.”
