In a scene straight out of a movie, a man was arrested after jumping onto the tarmac and chasing a taxiing Ryanair aircraft at Dublin Airport Thursday morning.
According to BBC, 23-year-old Patrick Kehoe was late for his flight and began banging on a terminal window to get the ground crew’s attention before running after the plane shortly before 7 a.m. local time.
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Kehoe was pursued and ultimately restrained by Ryanair staff before airport police arrived to arrest him.
An eyewitness told Ireland’s public service broadcaster RTE that the man was “quite determined” to make the flight, pointing out that he chased the plane “with his suitcase under his arm.”
“A male and female passenger were late for a Ryanair flight to Amsterdam this morning and arrived at the boarding gate after the flight had closed,” the airline confirmed in a statement.
“They were engaging with Ryanair staff at the gate and the male passenger was becoming agitated. He was banging on the window to try and get the aircraft to wait…and made his way onto the apron, trying to flag the aircraft down.”
A late passenger has been pinned to the ground by @DublinAirport police after running out of the terminal towards the plane pleading and shouting at the pilot to wait. 1/…@BBCNewsNI pic.twitter.com/TJL22qfNCt
— Declan Harvey (@NewsDeclan) September 27, 2018
Moments earlier he’d been inside banging on the window of the terminal asking ground crew to hold the plane. He somehow made it out to the Ryanair aircraft which was taxiing. When police arrived there was a scuffle and he was pinned to the tarmac. 2/… @BBCNewsNI pic.twitter.com/mzEbD6fHyw
— Declan Harvey (@NewsDeclan) September 27, 2018
A ground crew member said ‘he just ran from the building towards the plane”. It took two police cars and a police van to deal with it. The passenger, who seemed to be in his 30s, didn’t make it on board. The flight was only momentarily delayed. @BBCNewsNI
— Declan Harvey (@NewsDeclan) September 27, 2018
The man was charged with criminal damage to a door lock and has since been released on bail. The flight departed roughly 20 minutes behind scheduled but landed in Amsterdam on time.
Dublin Airport is among the top 15 busiest in Europe and hosted more than 21.2 million passengers in the first eight months of this year, up 6 percent from 2017.
