Fire engines flocked to a Ryanair plane when it landed back at Manchester Airport, where it had taken off an hour before.
Instead of flying south to Agadir in Morocco like it was supposed to, flight RK 1266 turned sharply left after a few minutes in the air on Sunday.
Then it flew nine laps in the sky above Wigan and St Helens before returning to Manchester’s runway just after 5pm.
It’s altitude of 4,625ft was just a fraction of the 37,000ft planes usually reach on this route.
Ryanair blamed a ‘minor technical issue’ for the incident, which looked a more dramatic spectacle than perhaps it really was.
Fire crews are understood to have been sent as a precaution.
A spokesperson for the airline said: ‘This flight from Manchester to Agadir on Sunday, March 16, returned to Manchester shortly after take-off due to a minor technical issue.
‘The aircraft landed normally at Manchester Airport and passengers disembarked.
‘To minimize disruption to affected passengers, we quickly arranged for a replacement aircraft to operate this flight, which departed to Agadir at 7.05pm local time that same day.
‘We sincerely apologise to affected passengers for any inconvenience caused.’
Earlier this month, an easyJet flight was forced to land in Porto, Portugal, after a fight reportedly broke out over a child watching The Karate Kid too loudly while flying from Spain to Gatwick.
That’s not the only in-flight spat t force an emergency landing in recent weeks.
A Wizz Air flight, from Gatwick to Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Hurghada, diverted to the Greek capital of Athens after a woman started swearing and arguing with cabin crew on March 12.
‘It was absolute bedlam, I’ve never seen anything like it’, Michael Hands said.
‘‘This woman had clearly been drinking all flight and maybe the crew shouldn’t have carried on serving her as it probably led to her kicking off.
‘She was sitting behind me and then she moved seat, but she wasn’t happy and started arguing with the cabin crew.
‘By this point we were two hours into the flight and somewhere over Greece and she kept saying “Call the police, call the police”.’
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