Gunfire on board Vueling flight from Ibiza to Madrid

PLENTY of passengers around the world are nervous about the risk of terrorists attacking aircraft and when a gun is heard to be fired inside an aircraft, it is understandable if they fear the worse.

It has now been revealed however that on Saturday August 20, it turned out that a shot was fired by an officer of the National Police by mistake on board Vueling flight VY3420 due to fly from Ibiza to Madrid.

Protocol in Spain dictates that any officer travelling by air is required to hand his or her firearm to the pilot of the aircraft to be locked away for the duration of the flight and on this occasion as the officer was removing his gun from his bag, it accidentally discharged a single live round.

Luckily for all concerned the bullet entered the embarrassed officer’s baggage and did not cause any harm to the officer, passengers, crew or indeed the aircraft itself although departure was delayed for some time whilst engineers checked the body of the plane.

All involved including the airline have played the incident down, although there is bound to be an enquiry as to why the firearm was not in the safety mode as it could have caused serious injury to innocent bystanders.