A Ryanair flight departing Valencia airport Tues morning for Brussels (flight FR1919) was evacuated after passengers spotted that the plane was pouring aviation fuel onto the runway from one of its engines.
Valencia airport activated a security protocol and secured the area, as the runway was covered in highly dangerous aviation fuel.
Ryanair said that the problem was down to a faulty valve which failed, allowing the escape of the fuel.
A spokesman for the Spanish pilots association, however, said that Ryanair’s half hour turnaround time was insufficient for proper safety checks and warned that the hard use of their machines could lead to a dangerous incident.
“What if this had happened as we took off?” asked one passenger, Miguel Ángel Cubillos, who has referred the incident to the Spanish air safety board.
Ryanair says that passengers were escorted to a waiting area and eventually took off two and a half hours laters. Passengers, however, say that they were herded by security staff into a small room where they were given no information about the incident and only received a brief apology for the delay over the intercom.