Thousands of passengers have endured severe disruption after the runway at Glasgow airport closed for 72 minutes on Tuesday afternoon.
A light aircraft believed to belong to Glasgow Flying Club blocked the runway after experiencing difficulties on landing at 3.48pm.
The runway reopened at 5pm, but not before at least seven inbound flights had diverted.
Diversions to Edinburgh, 42 miles to the east, began almost at once.
Three easyJet planes – from Gatwick, Faro in Portugal and Barcelona – diverted to the Scottish capital. They were joined by Jet2 from Tenerife, Ryanair from Malaga, Tui from Rhodes, Lufthansa from Frankfurt and British Airways from Heathrow.
At 5.10pm, a KLM flight from Amsterdam that had been holding for 20 minutes also diverted to Edinburgh. An estimated 1,100 passengers have so far arrived at the wrong airport.
Cancellations have begun: with Lufthansa choosing not to wait for Glasgow to reopen, the return flight to Frankfurt will not operate.
Departures are all heavily delayed. The last plane to get away is believed to be a British Airways flight to Heathrow that took off at 3.44pm.
With around 20 departures well behind schedule, the disruption is likely to take many hours to clear. One concern is that some crew may go “out of hours” if they do not depart soon on long flights to destinations including the Canary Islands and the Greek islands of Kos and Crete.
A spokesperson for the airport said: “Operations have resumed following an earlier incident involving a light aircraft at 1548 attended by emergency services.
“The airfield was reopened at 5pm and operations returned to normal. We thank passengers for their patience during this incident.”
Under air passengers’ rights rules, travellers whose flights are cancelled are entitled to be flown to their destination as soon as possible on any airline, and to be provided with meals and hotels until they get there.
Those delayed by two hours or more on short flights are entitled to refreshments at the airport.
Thousands more Scottish passengers at airports around the UK and Europe will be waiting for some hours for the delayed outbound flights to bring them home.
In August 2025, a stricken light aircraft closed the runway at Birmingham airport for seven hours.
Read more: Your nominations for Europe’s worst airport
