No one likes flight diversions, because they are usually caused by some negative circumstances. That being said, if you need to have a flight diversion, I think the below ranks as one of the most amusing reasons imaginable.
An EasyJet flight flying from London’s Gatwick Airport to Dalaman, Turkey, diverted after a champagne cork caused oxygen masks to drop from the overhead compartments. This caused the plane to divert to Milan, Italy, so that the damage could be repaired, causing the flight to be delayed by roughly seven hours.
Via The Sun:
Passengers revealed that two off-duty stewardesses were already guzzling champers when a couple of holidaymakers at the back of the plane also ordered a bottle.
A hapless stewardess then shot the cork into the ceiling of the aircraft — smashing ceiling tiles and causing oxygen masks to drop down.
Our source, further down the plane, said: “She was laughing about it. She said she had popped the cork and it hit the roof – causing the masks to come down.
“The pilot then came on to apologise and said: ‘We’ve got to divert to Milan to have it repaired because we can’t fly with the masks hanging down’.
Tourists, who were meant to arrive in Turkey at 10.30pm, say they suffered a seven-hour delay and did not reach their destination until 5.30am the next day.
Now that’s quite a delay over champagne! I’m still sort of in shock that champagne could cause this, though. Looking at EasyJet’s buy on board menu, it seems they sell champagne in small 37.5cl bottles. How much was the flight attendant shaking the champagne to cause the cork to fly up, not to mention to cause it to literally hit the overhead so hard that the oxygen masks deployed?
All is well that ends well, I suppose! And I’m curious what kind of trouble the flight attendants gets in over the incident.
The Champagne was probably not chilled and caused the cork to jump out and add to this the lack of training in how to pop a bottle sums to disaster. Luckily the stewardess wasn't pointing the bottle at someone's head.
What, no Krug? For as much as the diversion probably cost, a bottle of Krug would have been cheaper.
It was probably a ruse to refuel. Easyjet is always doing that.
I can't see how she thought it was appropriate to shoot the cork onboard an aircraft. Add in the cost of the diversion, inconvenience to the passengers and her boasting of her actions and I think she'll be looking for a new job tomorrow.
Just how stupid can you get?