I was one of the passengers on flight KM589 from Barcelona on August 30 who unfortunately had to endure two and a half hours of almost continuous loud singing, shouting and silly merry-making by a group of about four semi-drunk female passengers. These appear to have been with a popular tour operator and the four ladies in question had been drinking vodka since before boarding the aircraft in El Prat. The drinking continued throughout the flight and they even had the courage (sic) to offer a drink from their bottle to at least one of the all-male crew on board.

About 15 minutes into the flight, their annoying behaviour was brought to the attention of one of the crew but the merry-making just continued. At times even the announcements over the speakers were drowned by their chanting and raving. Being so late in the evening most of the passengers I'm sure just wanted to have a rest. Some Spanish tourists on the flight were certainly not amused at all by this novel in-flight entertainment. A Maltese passenger in fact was so irritated that he almost came to blows with one of the girls after landing.

To add insult to injury, when the chief purser asked us on disembarking whether we had a pleasant flight and we expressed our disgust, he just replied by asking us why we had not told him all this before when the truth is that his staff was in fact informed and indeed even offered a drink by one of the merry-makers. In any case one had to be really blind and deaf not to have noticed anything out of the ordinary in such a confined space on a plane.

Together with other law abiding passengers on the flight, I fail to understand how staff who I'm sure are trained how to deal with rowdy passengers seemed so incompetent and/or impotent in this case... Brand Malta indeed.