Birmingham Airport has reopened its runway after a small aircraft made an emergency landing, leading to hours of delays and cancellations.<\/p>\n
Three people from the aircraft were treated at the scene with one suffering minor injuries from the incident, which occurred at around 1.40pm on Wednesday, West Midlands Police said.<\/p>\n
Other emergency services including police, fire and ambulance all attended the scene at the airport\u2019s runway.<\/p>\n
Footage and images shared on social media appeared to show a small white plane, understood to be a Beechcraft B200 Super King Air, lying flat on the airport tarmac.<\/p>\n
Birmingham Airport first said at around 2.40pm that its runway was temporarily closed following the incident, before later suggesting flights would remain grounded until at least 8pm.<\/p>\n
In an update posted on X shortly before 8pm on Wednesday evening, the airport said: \u201cFollowing the aircraft incident today, the runway has reopened and operations have resumed.\u201d<\/p>\n
It apologised for the disruption caused by the incident and said passengers must check flight details and follow advice issued by their airlines.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur teams have worked as quickly as possible, in line with strict protocols, which must be followed to ensure a safe reopening of the runway following a prolonged closure,\u201d the airport added.<\/p>\n
Flights originally scheduled to depart as far back as 2.10pm were still running at the airport after the runway re-opened, but other flights faced delays as late as 12.10am on Thursday, according to Birmingham Airport\u2019s website.<\/p>\n
The Air Accidents Investigations Branch (AAIB) said it had started an investigation into the incident, with \u201ca multi-disciplinary team including inspectors with expertise in aircraft operations, engineering and recorded data\u201d deployed to the airport.<\/p>\n
A Beechcraft B200 Super King Air was also involved in a plane crash at London Southend Airport in July, which killed four people on board.<\/p>\n
Many people in Europe trying to fly back to Birmingham were still facing lengthy delays after its reopening.<\/p>\n
Diana Celella, an interior designer from Sutton Coldfield, was due to return from Lisbon on a Ryanair flight departing at 8.20pm after a week-long holiday in the Portuguese city with her husband Luigi, but saw online that the flight will now take off at 11.05pm.<\/p>\n
The 60-year-old, who also works as a lecturer at Arts University Bournemouth, told the PA news agency: \u201cMy husband and I have had a lovely holiday, so it\u2019s a real shame to end it with this delay. That said, if we do manage to take off tonight, we\u2019ll count ourselves lucky under the circumstances.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe atmosphere among fellow passengers is mostly resigned \u2014 everyone we\u2019ve spoken to recognises that it\u2019s out of Ryanair\u2019s control.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, there\u2019s been a lack of clear communication. We\u2019ve had no updates from Ryanair since 6.20pm, and there have been no announcements at Lisbon Airport, which is frustrating.<\/p>\n
\u201cFingers crossed we fly tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Luigi and Diana Celella (Diana Celella\/PA)<\/p>\n
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander earlier said disruption at the airport was \u201cminimal\u201d but she understood \u201chow frustrating\u201d the situation was for passengers.<\/p>\n
Earlier on Wednesday, West Midlands Police said in a post on X: \u201cWe are at Birmingham Airport this afternoon after a small aircraft was involved in an emergency landing at around 1.40pm.<\/p>\n
\u201cOfficers are among the emergency crews at the scene and one person has been reported to have minor injuries.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Civil Aviation Authority has been informed and the airport has suspended operations as an investigation is carried out.\u201d<\/p>\n
West Midlands Ambulance Service said in a statement: \u201cWe were called at 1.45pm to an incident involving a light aircraft at Birmingham Airport.<\/p>\n
\u201cHazardous Area Response Team (Hart) paramedics and three paramedic officers were sent to the scene.<\/p>\n
\u201cUpon arrival we found three patients from the aircraft, all of whom were assessed and discharged at the scene.\u201d<\/p>\n
Woodgate Aviation said one of its Beechcraft fixed-wing aircraft was involved in the incident.<\/p>\n
The company said in a statement: \u201cThe turbo-prop aircraft was on a flight to Belfast International Airport when it developed landing gear problems. The aircraft returned to Birmingham and made an emergency landing and the main under-carriage collapsed on touchdown.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwo crew members and a passenger were on board but were uninjured.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe aircraft remains on the runway and Woodgate Aviation will be co-operating fully with air accident investigators and airport services.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe would like to pay tribute to the professionalism of our colleagues and the emergency services at the airport for their prompt action.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Birmingham Airport has reopened its runway after a small aircraft made an emergency landing, leading to hours of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,748,393,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-323710","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-birmingham","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114984364592119401","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}