Around a hundred Ryanair passengers have decided to initiate legal proceedings against the airline after being subjected to a 12-hour delay on a flight from Menorca to Madrid because of a technical fault. They were told to wait in the Balearic Island airport but were not given any official information by the airline during their long wait.

According to information from a source with Spain's airport authority, AENA, the aeroplane due to operate flight RYR3057 and should have taken off at midday yesterday, but the pilot decided to abort take-off after detecting a technical fault.

The passengers were taken back to the terminal, where scenes of disgust and indignation quickly broke out when no representative of the airline came to explain the nature of the fault or the potencial solution to the situation.

One of the 180 passengers affected told members of the press that she and over a hundred of her fellow passengers had decided to bring a civil suit against the Irish airline, in which they will ask someone to take responsibility for the incident and compensate them for their inconvenience.

According to this passenger, who asked not to be named, not a single member of the crew came to give them any information about the fault and if or how it could be repaired.

Both the local police and the Guardia Civil were called in to control the situation and officers forced the airline to put their official stamp on the passengers' complaint forms so that they would have legal validity in any future court case.

Despite enquiries by the media, Ryanair has refused to comment on the incident.

The Irish airline is already being investigated for the recent spate of emergency landings that pilots are attributing to official company orders not to take on board any more than the absolute minimum amount of fuel necessary for a journey. Three planes had to make emergency landings in Valencia on July 26th after air-traffic delays left them dangerously low on fuel.