Four friends were thrown off a holiday flight to Turkey after they say they were accused of repeatedly playing a 'bomb' track on a phone during the flight.

The pals, from Oldham, strenuously deny allegations they were 'extremely disruptive' and insist they were targeted because they are 'bearded Asians'.

The drama unfolded after their Thomas Cook Airlines flight from Manchester Airport landed at Dalaman in Turkey on Saturday, September 24.

Four heavily-armed Turkish police officers boarded the aircraft and removed dentistry students Nabeal Iqbal, 19, and Hammad Ahmed, 21, warehouse manager Shabad Niaz, 23, and A-level student Tasiq Ali, 18.

The airline said the four had been 'extremely disruptive throughout the flight' and that one of them upset other passengers by repeatedly playing an audio track on a mobile in which the word 'bomb' was used several times. But Nabeal denied the allegation.

He said: "At the front the cabin crew manager accused us of saying the word 'bomb' and taking a bag with a bomb into the toilet and leaving it there.

"We know we didn't say bomb and we didn't have a bomb. It was embarrassing. I would never say anything like that on an airplane. It's always in the news, people getting escorted off planes after 9/11. It's best not to joke about anything like that on a plane. I just don't think we were treated fairly at all.

"You could say we were a bit loud. We were having a laugh and joke with people around us. As we were taken off, the cabin crew manager said 'I can't believe you have said bomb on a plane, it's disgusting and you will never fly with Thomas Cook again'."

He said the four mates had been thrown off simply because 'we are bearded Asians'.

Another passenger, Pamela Clarke, 55, from Sheffield, who was sitting six rows away, said.: "I never heard anything about bombs. There was no bad behaviour or anything like that from them."

The airline said. the four had been 'extremely disruptive throughout this flight' and that one of them upset other passengers by repeatedly playing an audio track on a mobile in which the word 'bomb' was used several times.Nabeal denied this and insisted their mobile phones would have required a wifi connection to play it.

A Thomas Cook Airlines spokesman said: "Four individuals were extremely disruptive throughout this flight and were refused carriage on the basis of their abusive behaviour. We do not tolerate such severely disruptive behaviour towards our crew or passengers."

The pals were eventually released by police and continued their holiday, but say when they turned up at Dalaman Airport on Friday, September 30, they were turned away again by airline officials and had to pay £125 each to get a flight with Pegasus Airlines.