A Thomson Airways' Boeing 757 that took off from Las Palmas on a flight to Luton had to make an emergency landing at Francisco Sá Carneiro Airport in Oporto as the aeroplane's windscreen had shattered but not imploded.
220 passengers were on board the end-of-holiday flight as it descended from 30,000 feet to 10,000 feet and headed to Oporto where airport operator ANA cleared a runway and put emergency services on full alert.
Sensibly, the flight deck crew did not tell passengers the cause of the diversion, and cabin staff were praised by the company for remaining calm despite the dangerous situation.
One passenger said, "There were those who looked nervous, but most people remained calm, and we realised something was wrong before they announced it because of the sudden descent of the plane mid-flight, but everyone clapped as we landed."
According to an official source at ANA, the Thomson Airways' Boeing 757 traveling from Las Palmas, Canary Islands, Spain, to Luton, England, made an emergency landing request "for technical reasons" and landed normally, "without any problems", in Oporto, at 17:45 on Monday evening.
"The 220 passengers and crew of the flight headed to Luton shortly after midnight" in another Thompson plane.
In December last year on a flight from Las Palmas to Brussels, a Thomas Cook Airlines flight was forced to make an unscheduled landing at Faro airport after a nine-year-old suffered scalding on her legs from spilt tea.
The incident aboard the Airbus A320-200 obliged the Captain to land in Faro and the child, accompanied by her family, was transported to the local hospital.
Belgian media said it was one of the crew members who poured boiling tea over the girl, but witnesses on the same flight say it was a member of the family which caused the accident.
The family later warned of the danger of hot drinks on board, but decided not to file a formal complaint about the incident.
