"Miss, we need to check your luggage." A moment of panic, then embarrassment, and finally the high-altitude marriage proposal that sent the bride-to-be and the passengers on the Catania-Alghero flight into a frenzy.

That's what happened on Sunday evening, high above the clouds. The protagonists were Manuel, 29, and Alessia, 26, both from Catania, on vacation in Alghero.

Just minutes after landing at Sardinia's Riviera del Corallo airport, last night at 8:30 PM, the Ryanair flight attendant called a young woman over the microphone to check the contents of her luggage, which seemed suspicious. Eyes widened, and tension erupted among the passengers. The frightened young woman slowly approached the steward and awkwardly pointed to the compartment where her suitcase was kept. Instead, her fiancé, Manuel, appeared, holding a bouquet of flowers. With the complicity of his future mother-in-law, the stewardess, and the entire flight crew, he knelt before Alessia, took the ring from his pocket, and made the fateful proposal.

It seemed like a publicity stunt. But the embrace and kiss, along with the visibly moved girl's tears of joy, confirmed that the two were serious. The applause and smiles of the passengers, who for a moment had thought something serious, provided the backdrop. Love has taken flight this time too, thousands of meters above the ground.

"I'd been planning it for a while and I liked the idea of doing it on a plane, considering our many trips. So I chose the ring, and when I boarded, I organized everything with the flight crew," Manuel explains, as soon as they arrived in Alghero. "I knew absolutely nothing," Alessia comments, "and for me it was a surprise, something that caught me a bit off guard, after a moment of confusion and fear when I had to ask for baggage checks."