Pilgrims on their way to Fatima in Portugal were delayed for 12 hours at Dublin airport yesterday morning including several hours sitting inside the aircraft waiting to take off.
As tempers frayed, airport police were called to assist amid claims that the airline in question and the airport handlers were not informing the 150 or so passengers what was happening.
"Many of us were going on a pilgrimage to Fatima and so there were several who were elderly," said a pilgrim, from Omagh, Co Tyrone. "It was very hot and some people were getting claustrophobic stuck inside the plane. After a few hours, a lot of them wanted to get off," she said.
The Euro Atlantic flight was due to leave Dublin at 3pm on Thursday. According to passengers, the flight boarded on time but just before 4pm, they were told there was a technical problem and that they had to disembark.
"We were told we would not be leaving until 10.30 that night but they gave us food vouchers and nobody really complained or minded too much," she said.
"We then boarded at 10pm or so and after taxiing away, they told us there would be a further delay due to problems with air traffic control in Lisbon.
"They kept us on the plane for a couple of hours until people demanded to be let off. To hold people, especially older people, in such cramped situations is unfair and they weren't telling us what was going on," she added.
After demands from some of the people on board, the passengers disembarked and airport police were called. The flight eventually took off at around 3.30am.
A spokeswoman for the Dublin Airport Authority said it received a request for airport police from a Sky Handling representative at 12.55am but while there was a certain amount of anger from passengers, there was no violence or abuse and the police merely observed the situation from a distance.