Birmingham Airport latest: Flights still disrupted after plane’s emergency landing closes runway

According to its website, Birmingham Airport is the seventh-largest airport in the UK and the third largest outside London, handling approximately 11.5 million passengers in 2023.

By 2033, it hopes to increase this figure by 50 per cent to reach 18 million.

Thousands of passengers faced travel delays and disruption after all flights were suspended from Birmingham Airport due to an “aircraft incident”.

It is believed that the aircraft involved was a Beechcraft B200 Super King Air twin turboprop light aircraft, which belonged to Woodgate Aviation, self-described as a leading provider of corporate, business, private and general aviation services in Northern Ireland since 1969.

The flight, which is believed to have been heading to its home base of George Best Belfast City, took off at 1.16pm according to data on FlightRadar24. It climbed to 5,750 feet and almost immediately entered a holding pattern.

At 1.35pm the aircraft overflew the runway at just 300 feet, but it remains unclear if the pilot was attempting to land or enabling air traffic controllers to inspect the undercarriage. FlightRadar data shows the aircraft made contact with the ground at 1.57pm.

Despite Birmingham Airport having reopened its runways, there are still a number of delays this morning.

One flight to Amsterdam has been cancelled because the aircraft and crew could not reach Birmingham on Wednesday.

14 flights have been either delayed or are estimated be delayed by 45 minutes or more.

29 flights have either been or are set to be minorly delayed.

Our Travel Correspondent Simon Calder has launched a poll on X to see whether passengers would prefer to be disrupted on their outbound or inbound journey.

So far, the majority of the 526 voters have said they’d before their journey home to be affected rather than their flight outbound.

The last update we received from Birmingham Airport was just before 8pm last night.

“Following the aircraft incident today, the runway has reopened and operations have resumed,” it said.

It apologised for the disruption…