A Monday morning flight from Malta turned into something closer to a sauna with wings for a plane full of Ryanair passengers. The New York Post reports that flyers on FR7268, bound for Birmingham, were left stuck aboard an aircraft with no working air conditioning for well over an hour, and by the time it was over, some had reportedly fainted and others had thrown up. Sixteen-year-old Eva Gregory was on that flight with her mother and brother, and she didn’t hold back describing it to Jam Press. “The whole situation makes me feel extremely angry,” she said, in comments as reported by the Post. The flight’s original 5:40 a.m. departure time came and went, and the trouble, as Gregory tells it, started well before anyone even reached the aircraft, the kind of delay that can turn miserable once there’s no clear timeline for relief. Two Buses, No AC, and a Wait That Kept Getting Worse Getting to the plane was its own ordeal, per the Post’s account. Passengers were loaded onto a bus with no air conditioning for about half an hour just to reach the terminal, then moved to a second bus whose cooling system Gregory said barely worked, before being made to wait on the tarmac for another 20 minutes. Boarding didn’t bring relief either. “When we boarded, it was immediately obvious the air conditioning was not on,” she recalled. “It was like walking into extreme heat.” What followed only got worse. As the cabin heat climbed with no fix in sight, passengers reportedly grew “extremely agitated,” and some started stripping off layers of clothing just to cope. “People were taking their tops off because of the heat,” Gregory said, adding that two people passed out and others were sick. She wasn’t immune to it either. “I was experiencing the feeling of needing to throw up, but as I have a phobia of being sick, it gave me a panic attack,” she said. Ryanair passengers strip down, vomit and faint after being trapped on sweltering plane https://t.co/0wCl9gXSwv pic.twitter.com/mCqibXsk0z— New York Post (@nypost) August 14, 2026 Ryanair’s explanation, given to the Post, points to mechanical trouble rather than any deliberate mishandling. A spokesperson said the flight “was delayed prior to departure due to a minor technical issue with the aircraft and subsequently became further delayed after a passenger became ill onboard.” Engineers eventually cleared the aircraft, and it left Malta at 7:00 p.m. It’s the kind of story that tends to sound familiar to people who’s followed enough airline complaints, where a small ground delay snowballs the moment passengers feel they have no say in what happens next. Online, commenters were largely unsympathetic to the airline. One commenter didn’t mince words about the crew’s response, writing, “‘…… Gregory felt that the crew members ‘did their best’…’ If they didn’t hand out free water, they didn’t do their best.” A reply beneath that comment added, “And the crew sure didn’t turn on the APU and run the AC!” Another commenter pointed to broader regulatory differences, writing, “The US Department of Transportation rules prevent this from happening in the USA. They must keep temperatures comfortable as well as ensure working toilets and provide free water. If those systems are not working, they must deplane the passengers to wait in the terminal. Even if they have to bus them from the tarmac. If the wait time exceeds 3 hours (4 if international) with working AC, toilets, and bottled water; they must offer passengers the option to deplane.” A third reader simply summed up the fatigue many frequent flyers seem to share these days: “Plane travel these days is the absolute pits! Bring back Eastern Airlines!” For now, Ryanair hasn’t detailed what, if anything, changes for passengers going forward. Gregory, for her part, said she hoped that sharing her story would help inspire ‘Ryanair to fix its mistakes and stop valuing money over the passengers.’