A nightmare night for passengers on Ryanair flight FR 2687, departing last night from London Stansted and arriving in Cagliari Elmas.

A passenger, traveling with his wife and two young daughters, aged 4 and 2, recounts: "Yesterday we had a return flight from London at 9:55 PM Italian time. We realized something wasn't right at the airport, thirty minutes before takeoff ." "Everyone lined up at the gate for boarding, they changed our gate, and the new one was accessible by taking an internal airport metro... We arrived at the new one, got in line, and after another half-hour of waiting, we finally boarded, and at 10:55 PM we took off ."

So far, except for an hour's delay, so much has been going well: "The flight is smooth, there's no turbulence, the girls are falling asleep. After less than an hour and a half, we're already off the coast of Corsica, and the captain warns us that we'll be in Cagliari in 50 minutes." And then: "Tragedy."

"Suddenly," he continues, " a warning in English from the captain informs us that we're being diverted to Alghero due to fog in Cagliari ." "The flight begins circling over Alghero a couple of times, and we land at 1:00 a.m. At that point, they tell us we'll be disembarking in 20 minutes, but instead they leave us locked inside the plane for over an hour (about an hour and 15 minutes) because there's no staff at the airport." " Alone, inside a plane, in the middle of the runway at a deserted airport, in the middle of the night, without anyone even offering us a bottle of water or even asking if the girls needed anything . It's important to note that we weren't the only ones on board with children; there were also elderly passengers, and many had an urgent need to get back to Cagliari quickly, as today was a normal working day."

There were also delays at passport control and "we don't know why", "without any services except the bathrooms (at least)." "The only bright spot is that they have the buses ready for us to return to Cagliari", although "everyone is left to their own intuition and interpretation". "By now it's 2:30 in the morning, everyone is at the end of their tether, with the little girls in their arms trying to sleep and the luggage to drag". "We get on and off we go straight to Elmas: new bus and impeccable driver, worthy of praise... ". In short: "A nightmare".