BA plane
Passengers received an ear-splitting start to their holidays after being forced to endure a faulty speaker that buzzed for most of their ten-hour flight Reuters Photographer/Reuters

Passengers received an ear-splitting start to their holidays after being forced to endure a faulty speaker that buzzed for much of their ten-hour flight.

Nicole Lightbody, 26, said she had to put up with the loud noise when she flew from London to Las Vegas last month, which sounded like static from the plane's public address system.

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The accountant, from Glasgow, said she and passengers around her were forced to listen to the humming for five minutes at a time at intervals of around 15 minutes.

The speaker went haywire after a single oxygen mask fell from the ceiling at the start of the flight and remained down for the entire trip.

"We couldn't relax because of the noise. It was ten hours of hell basically," Lightbody told MirrorOnline.

She added: "The cabin crew did everything they could to deal with it.

"It happened every 15 minutes for five minutes at a time. They came round with noise cancelling headphones for people to put on. There were people asking to be moved because of the noise."

But when the accountant later filled out a customer complaint form she said she was offered just £20 in compensation. She said that "felt like a smack in the face".

A British Airways spokesperson said: "We apologised for a temporary issue with our public announcement system that affected a small number of customers on a flight last month which was quickly resolved.

"Our highly trained cabin crew also reassured customers after a single set of oxygen masks deployed accidentally."