A Lufthansa Airbus A380 superjumbo with up to 509 passengers onboard was forced to divert to Delhi Airport on Wednesday to drop off a husband and wife who had reportedly got into a rowdy argument during a flight from Munich to Bangkok.
Lufthansa flight LH772 departed Munich at around 11:20 pm on Tuesday and was due to arrive in Bangkok around ten hours later but ended up making an unscheduled stop in India due to what the airline described as an “unruly passenger”.
New agency ANI reported that the pilots initially requested to divert to an airport in Pakistan but after being denied permission to land, the plane headed to Delhi where it landed without incident.
The passengers were offloaded from the flight and handed over to local authorities, although the airline is still said to be weighing up whether to press charges after the passengers expressed remorse for their actions.
India’s Directorate of Civil Aviation is said to be coordinating with the German embassy in Delhi over what to do with the passenger, who is of German descent.
Despite the unscheduled stopover, the flight landed in Bangkok on Wednesday afternoon with a delay of just two hours.
German newspaper Bild reported that the man was German and had been arguing with his Thai wife during the flight to Bangkok. The pair apparently got into an altercation only a few hours into the flight, and it became so bad that the woman said she felt ‘threatened’ by her husband.
After cabin crew attempted to intervene, the man ‘freaked out’ and started to throw food around the cabin. He reportedly attempted to light an airline blanket with a cigarette lighter, smashed his mobile phone and undressed in the cabin as he threatened other passengers.
Cabin crew turned off the inflight entertainment system so that the suspect couldn’t see the inflight map, which would indicate that the plane was diverting to Delhi, according to Bild.
