LONDON: A drunken plane passenger who abused cabin crew on a flight to Tenerife, in Spain's Canary Islands, spent 36 hours as a castaway after the airline abandoned him on an island in the Atlantic, 480km from his destination.

Monarch Airlines said the man became rude and aggressive towards staff soon after flight ZB558 took off on Tuesday evening from Manchester, in northern England.

When he refused to calm down, the pilot took the decision to divert the plane and make an unscheduled stop-off at an airstrip on the tiny Portuguese island of Porto Santo.

The passenger was frogmarched out - and his luggage removed from the hold - before the Airbus A321 carrying 200 other passengers took off again, leaving him behind. Porto Santo, described as an unspoilt island paradise with a population of fewer than 5000, is a two-hour ferry ride away from the nearest major airport, on Madeira.

An officer at the airport's police station told The Times's website the man had remained on the island until yesterday morning, when he managed to book a seat on a German charter flight to the Canary Islands.