Budget flight takes off, leaves passengers stranded in Portugal

A group of passengers were left stranded in a Portugal airport when the budget flight they should have been on took off without them.

Easyjet flight EJU8717 was diverted to the northwest city of Porto on Friday afternoon after flight crew were told the runway at Lisbon Airport was closed.

Passengers were disembarked from the plane for comfort and told they would be able to reboard the same flight once the plane had refuelled.

Instead, after waiting five hours they were told the flight had taken off without them and the airline would provide replacement buses for the remainder of the trip.

In a statement, Easyjet confirmed that due to the runway at Lisbon Airport being closed, the delay “caused crew to exceed their legal working hours limit” so passengers were instead offered a bus service for the rest of their trip.

“After passengers disembarked, a slot became available so the flight operated an empty sector to Lisbon to ensure it could operate later sectors,” the statement read.

The passengers eventually arrived at Lisbon nine hours after their original scheduled arrival time.