Ryanair Passengers Left in Sweltering Heat in Malta — and Our Media Remains Silent

The British and American media, together with users on X, are reporting the ordeal allegedly suffered by passengers aboard a Ryanair flight from Malta to Birmingham on 10 August. Passengers have described people fainting, vomiting and stripping off their tops because of the unbearable heat inside the aircraft while it remained on the ground at Malta International Airport.

Yet in Malta, the story appears to have attracted remarkably little attention.

The flight in question was Ryanair FR7268 from Malta to Birmingham. According to passenger accounts, the difficulties began even before passengers boarded the aircraft. They reportedly spent around an hour divided between two buses where the air-conditioning was either inadequate or failing.

Then came the aircraft.

Eva Gregory, who was travelling with her mother, Angela Gregory, and her brother, Samuel, described passengers becoming increasingly distressed as the temperature inside the aircraft rose. Some removed their tops to cope with the heat. Others reportedly suffered medical episodes.

Two passengers are said to have passed out. Others vomited in their seats.

Ryanair stated that the flight, scheduled to depart at around 5.40 p.m. on 10 August, was delayed because of what the airline described as a “minor technical issue”. The airline also said a passenger became ill on board.

But the passengers’ accounts raise a much broader question about what happens when hundreds of people are placed inside an aircraft sitting under the Maltese summer sun without adequate cooling.

A parked airliner does not simply cool itself.

While an aircraft is on the ground with its main engines switched off, power and air-conditioning can be supplied by the Auxiliary Power Unit, or APU — the small turbine situated in the tail of the aircraft — or by ground equipment.

And operating an APU costs money.

One estimate circulating in reports about the incident puts its fuel consumption at roughly 110 kilograms an hour. Maintenance costs also add up, since every operating hour contributes to servicing and eventual overhaul.

For an airline, therefore, ground cooling is quite literally a cost.

But another calculation should be made — the human one.

A resting human body produces roughly 100 watts of heat. Put 189 passengers — approximately the capacity of a Ryanair Boeing 737-800 — inside an enclosed aircraft, and the passengers alone generate something approaching 19 kilowatts of heat.

Then add the Maltese August sun beating down on a metal fuselage.

The result should hardly require explanation.

According to passengers, they remained in these conditions for more than an hour. By then, some had reportedly already endured another prolonged period inside the buses transporting them to the aircraft.

It is possible, of course, that the technical problem affecting the aircraft was itself connected with the cooling system. Aircraft develop faults, and technical problems occur. Nobody should pretend otherwise.

But if passengers’ accounts are accurate, there is another disturbing detail.

Water was apparently still being sold.

In other words, while passengers were reportedly fainting, vomiting and suffering in extreme heat, access to drinking water was allegedly still being treated as a commercial transaction.

That surely deserves an explanation.

There is also another aspect to this story which, as someone living in Malta, I find almost as troubling.

The story is being reported abroad.

British newspapers and media organisations have picked it up. It has circulated internationally and has reached American media and social-media platforms. Passengers themselves are speaking publicly about what happened.

Yet where is the Maltese media?

Where is the investigation into what happened at Malta International Airport?

Where are the questions about how long passengers were kept on buses and inside the aircraft?

Was adequate ventilation available?

Was the APU operating?

If it was not, why not?

When passengers began fainting or vomiting, what procedures were followed?

Were passengers offered water free of charge?

At what point does an operational delay become a health and safety issue?

These are legitimate journalistic questions. They are not anti-Ryanair questions, nor are they anti-airport questions. They are questions that should be asked whenever an incident involving passengers’ welfare takes place in Malta.

Yet once again, one gets the disturbing impression that a story can become international news while barely disturbing the tranquillity of the Maltese media landscape.

And this is where the incident becomes about more than one Ryanair flight.

A genuinely independent press should not wait for a story to become embarrassing abroad before deciding whether it deserves attention at home. Nor should incidents involving powerful companies, major economic interests or important institutions somehow become less newsworthy simply because they happened in Malta.

The role of journalism is precisely to ask uncomfortable questions.

If passengers were trapped in oppressive heat to the point that people fainted and vomited, that is news.

If passengers experiencing medical distress were still expected to pay for water, that is news.

If an aircraft remained on the tarmac in Malta during extreme summer temperatures without adequate cooling, that is news.

And if newspapers from London to New York are reporting what happened while much of our own media remains silent, then that silence itself becomes part of the story.

We constantly hear about the importance of an independent media.

Independent media where?

Because on stories such as this one, Malta sometimes feels less like a country with a vigorous fourth estate and more like a place where silence has become normal.

And that should concern us far more than one delayed flight.