Why did they wait three hours to toss him out???

If you or I had done the same, we would have been tossed off in minutes...

A member of Qatar's royal family was thrown off a British Airways flight after delaying take-off for several hours by insisting that strangers should not sit next to women in his party.

Sheikh Bader Bin Kalifa al-Thani, a junior noble in Qatar's 3,000-strong ruling clan, was travelling from Milan to London on Thursday afternoon on flight BA563.

The sheikh was accompanied by another male family member, three women, a cook and a butler. There was no first-class compartment on the flight.

When the sheikh failed to convince other passengers in the Club Europe compartment to change their seats, he got up and walked to the pilot's cabin to complain.

A three-hour delay followed, as the Qatari group refused to sit down, or to listen to entreaties from a representative of the Qatari embassy in Italy, who was sent to mediate.

Eventually the pilot called a security team to eject the group, which later flew to London with Alitalia. The Corriere della Sera newspaper said the women sat around the sheikh on the later flight.

The delay caused 50 of the 117 passengers on board to miss their connecting flight in London.