Airline Passenger 'Attacked' By Police After Being 'Wrongly Accused' Of Manhandling Staff

A passenger on board a Ryanair flight from Portugal to London Stansted Airport suffered injuries after being dragged off the plane for allegedly pushing a staff member.

Speaking to Mirror Online, 20-year-old Rafik Boutiche said a female staff member called police after objecting to him changing his seat in order to sit with a friend. He claimed she wrongly accused him of pushing her. Officers arrived and dragged him out of the flight. The exact date of the incident was not known.

Video of the incident showed the officers dragging Boutiche with a co-passenger shouting “You are hurting him.” After being removed from the plane, Boutiche along with his friend, 19-year-old Islam Fessih, stayed at a hotel in Portugal for another night.

Speaking to the daily from the hotel, he said, "My hand is cut up, it's burning me at the moment. My ankle has been sprained and my neck is hurting me. We're just two young lads, we're not looking for trouble, we just wanted to get back home. I've never experienced anything like this, I never thought it was possible to go through what I've gone through. It's made me very emotional."

Boutiche said he only wanted to move to the empty seat beside his friend, something that everyone on the flight was doing.

Fessiah said, "We realized there were a number of free spaces, we wanted to sit together so he tried to move forward. He sat in front of me because there was a free seat, but she said he had to move."

He added that Boutiche may have accidentally come in contact with the staff member.

"He's a big lad. She ran to the other end of the plane and called police, we didn't know what was going on until police boarded the flight. We didn't know what was going on,” he added.

Fessih also took to Twitter to say his friend was “attacked.”

"There was a free seat next to me but the air hostess refused to let him sit there and accused him of punching her when the whole plane has his side,” he wrote.