Germanwings plane makes unscheduled landing in Venice

A Germanwings plane flying from Hanover to Rome made an unscheduled landing in Venice on Friday after two people on board were suddenly taken ill.

Airport sources quoted by ANSA news agency said it was not an emergency landing. However all passengers were made to get off the plane and wait for a rescheduled flight later in the day.

"The boarding was regular and the plane took off from Hanover about 10 minutes late," a passenger from Rome, Eugenio Bartolini, told Venice-based Il Gazzettino newspaper.

"We flew over the Alps and had to follow the route Verona-Bologna-Rome, when we saw the plane gradually loosing height until the Venice lagoon appeared," he said.

"At that point the aircraft captain told us in English that two people, a crew member and a passenger, were not feeling good so he had decided to land at the Venice airport," the man concluded.

After the plane landed in Venice, some health workers got on board and gave assistance to the two people, who reportedly suffered from "strong attacks of nausea."

Germanwings is Lufthansa's budget airline whose Airbus A320 en route from Spain's Barcelona to Germany's Duesseldorf crashed in southern France on March 24, killing 150 people on board. Endit