Thousands of passengers had their flying plans disrupted on Sunday afternoon when two of the UK’s busiest airports were hit by separate problems.
At Heathrow, Europe’s biggest airport, operations were disrupted due to a spectacular tail strike involving a freight plane. No one was hurt.
At 5.13pm a DHL Airbus A300 cargo aircraft was landing from Leipzig when the tail struck the northern runway. According to Flightradar24 data, the aircraft was travelling at 170mph when the incident happened.
Jerry Dyer, who runs the YouTube channel Big Jet TV, was commentating at the time. He later said: “If you look, at around 40ft [above the ground], there’s a gust, which destabilises them, which leads to the left side touching first, then they correct it to the right side, then it really starts going wrong, almost into oscillation. The engines were retarded and spoilers were up.
“Looks like they tried to save the nose slamming into the runway, which resulted in the sharp nose-up pitch.
“Based on the high angle of pitch, seems they were looking to go around at touchdown but had to wait for the engines to spool full power.”
The pilots then took off again to perform a “go-around”, landing safely 20 minutes later on the southern runway.
A spokesperson for DHL UK told The Independent: “We are pleased to report that the crew are all safe. We will be investigating the circumstances around this incident in cooperation with the respective aviation authorities. Until that investigation is completed, we are unable to provide any further information.”
Heathrow’s northern runway was closed for an inspection after the incident. While the closure was for 10 minutes or less, a number of aircraft had to perform “go-arounds”, adding to pressure on air-traffic controllers.
More than 20 departing flights were delayed by an hour or more – including at least seven transatlantic departures.
At around the same time, Manchester airport was hit by fog, which led to many delays, diversions and cancellations.
An easyJet flight from Istanbul to Manchester spent half an hour circling south of the airport before attempting an approach and then diverting to East Midlands airport.
The passengers on the Airbus A320 operating flight 2152 spent over two hours on the ground at the airport before departing for Manchester. Once again, the plane had to fly a holding pattern before landing safely, three and a half hours late.
Due to the delays at Manchester, easyJet grounded a total of 16 arrivals and departures, affecting around 2,500 passengers. Links to and from Venice, Berlin and Dalaman in Turkey were among the cancellations.
A spokesperson for easyJet said: “Due to the impact of adverse weather conditions in Manchester yesterday resulting in air traffic control restrictions, some flights were unable to operate.
“While this was outside of our control, we are sorry for the inconvenience caused and provided customers with options to rebook or receive a refund as well as hotel accommodation and meals where required.
“The safety and wellbeing of our customers and crew is easyJet’s highest priority.”
