Berlin/Dublin - Thirty-three Ryanair
passengers were treated in hospital, some bleeding from their
ears, after their Croatia-bound plane lost cabin pressure and
made an emergency landing in Frankfurt on Friday, German police
said on Saturday.
Oxygen masks were released on the Ryanair flight FR7312 from
Dublin to Zadar in Croatia when it lost cabin pressure and
diverted to Frankfurt Hahn airport, Ryanair said in a statement.
"In line with standard procedure, the crew deployed oxygen
masks and initiated a controlled descent," the airline statement
said.
A log on flightradar24.com showed the flight descending from
37,000 to 10,000 feet over a seven-minute period 80 minutes into
the flight.
Ryanair said the plane "landed normally and customers
disembarked, where a small number received medical attention as
a precaution."
A spokesman for German police said 33 of 189 passengers were
hospitalised, some bleeding from their ears. The spokesman said
some were still receiving treatment on Saturday.
German air accident investigator BFU, responsible for
investigating the incident, said its team was heading to Hahn
airport to secure the cockpit voice recorder and flight data
recorder and to interview crew and passengers.
The BFU spokesman declined to speculate on the possible
cause of the incident.
Ryanair said a flight had left Frankfurt to Zadar on
Saturday morning. Police said some passengers had decided not to
continue with their journey.
Ryanair said it had agreed to pay for hotels for the
affected passengers but said there was a "shortage of available
accommodation."
Ryanair, which flies in 37 countries and carried 130 million
passengers last year, is Europe's largest airline by passenger
numbers, according to the International Air Transport
Association.
An emergency descent by an Air China aircraft on Tuesday
after cabin oxygen levels dropped has been linked to a co-pilot
smoking an e-cigarette during the flight, state media said on
Friday.