A Ryanair flight to Malta was diverted to Rome's Ciampino airport last Saturday after a depressurisation problem in the cabin, The Times has learnt.

The flight from London (Luton) - with 180 passengers and five infants under two - arrived five hours behind schedule, a spokesman for Malta International Airport confirmed.

According to the Aviation Herald, the flight experienced the problem while flying over Paris. The Herald said the crew did not declare an emergency and diverted to Ciampino.

The MIA spokesman said the flight arrived in Malta at 11.40 p.m. with the return flight leaving just under an hour later.

Attempts to contact a spokesman for the airline were unsuccessful with questions sent to Ryanair remaining unanswered at the time of writing.

Just three weeks ago another Ryanair flight - from Bristol to Barcelona - was forced to make an unscheduled landing at France's Limoges airport when it lost cabin pressure. The airline had said that the flight, with 168 passengers on board, "experienced an in-flight depressurisation incident which caused the oxygen masks on board to deploy".

It said the captain descended and diverted the aircraft as a safety precaution.

Reuters had reported that 16 passengers had been taken to hospital complaining of earache and were released before continuing their journey to Girona by coach.