A RYANAIR plane was forced to turn back to London after take-off this morning after a fight broke out between passengers.

The flight to Lisbon touched back down on the tarmac not long after leaving Stansted Airport.

A Ryanair spokeswoman said: "This flight from London to Lisbon (13 Dec) returned to Stansted Airport shortly after take-off after a number of passengers became disruptive inflight.

"The aircraft landed normally and was met by police upon arrival.

"The aircraft will depart to Lisbon shortly.

"We will not tolerate unruly or disruptive behaviour at any time and the safety and comfort of our customers, crew and aircraft is our number one priority. This is now a matter for local police.”

"The flight redirected back to Stansted. One person has been detained."

A spokesman for Stansted Airport confirmed the flight landed at 12.45pm.

One woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, said: "We are on a flight from Stansted to Lisbon that was supposed to depart at 11:50am. I think we were 15 minutes into our flight when the captain warned us we would be returning to the airport.

"When we landed two military men came in and removed one of the passengers."

She added: "I didn’t see the fight myself but it seems to have started because one of them broke the other’s phone."

The passenger has said that all the passengers are being moved onto another plane to continue their journey, but there is no indication of when the flight would be back in the air.

She said the situation was handed well by the crew but was confusing for flyers on what was going on.

One passenger tweeted: "My @ryanair flight from stanstead to Lisbon has returned to stanstead because of a fight on the plane."

A number of others also posted about their delayed flight, with some saying armed police were waiting at Stansted for the plane.