Spanish police have arrested 12 out of 24 people who fled an airplane that made an emergency landing Friday at the Palma airport on the island of Mallorca.

The Air Arabia Maroc plane was heading from Casablanca, Morocco, to Istanbul, Turkey, when a passenger claimed to be having an alleged diabetic coma and needed emergency medical attention. Once the plane landed at 8 p.m., passengers ran off the plane, illegally entering the country.

"It's usual that we receive these kinds of requests for emergency landings, when a passenger is sick, and the captain decides it's important to land. What is not usual and is unheard of, is that we see 21 people running on the airport's tarmac,” said the Spanish government's delegate in the Balearics, Aina Calvo, at a meeting with officials, Marjoca Daily Bulletin reported.

Authorities are investigating if the fleeing was originally organized or if passengers had made the decision spontaneously after the plane landed. It is believed that the passenger who claimed to be sick was faking to allow for the emergency landing.

“So far we don’t have any data that allows us to affirm that this was an orchestrated operation,” Calvo said. “We have to finalize the investigation, to establish causality and then decide whether we have to revise some proceedings.”

A video shared shows the moment that passengers had fled the plane.

The incident had caused the airport to close for three hours, which forced more than 40 flights to be delayed or canceled. Spain’s national airport operator said that 13 planes had to be rerouted to Barcelona and other airports.

Calvo said that the people involved have been identified from the passenger list and that the arrested passengers face deportation. They also face charges for violating aviation rules.

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