Birmingham Airport shuts after aircraft makes emergency landing

Birmingham Airport has closed until at least 6pm today with 93 flights impacted after a private aircraft heading to Belfast was forced to make an emergency landing.

All departures and arrivals at the hub were halted after the twin-engine Beech B200 Super King Air plane declared an in-flight emergency and diverted to Birmingham.

Thousands of passengers were impacted by the disruption this afternoon, with 48 departures and 45 arrivals due in the time between the emergency landing and 6pm.

Some arriving flights were diverted to other airports, with services from Ryanair and Jet2 sent to Stansted and Manchester while Birmingham remained closed. 

West Midlands Police said one person suffered minor injuries in the incident, which happened at about 1.40pm – and confirmed all airport operations were suspended. 

One X user posted photos of the stricken plane’s tail sitting on the runway, writing: ‘An aircraft on the runway at Birmingham airport seems to have emergency crews around it.’ They added: ‘No flights taking off till 6.00. Not a great start to the holiday.’

Another wrote: ‘Son and family have been diverted to Stansted. Just landed but not given any more info yet.’ 

And a third said: ‘How can a plane that small and on the grass delay us for three hours? Any explanation?’

Emergency crews headed to the runway to assist those on board the plane, which is operated by Belfast-based private charter operator Woodgate Aviation.

The plane, registered G-NIAA, was built in 1981 and is owned by a firm called Blue Sky Investments on the Isle of Man, according to Civil Aviation Authority records.

The Beech B200 Super King Air is the same aircraft model involved in the fireball crash at London Southend Airport on July 13 which killed four people onboard. 

A Birmingham Airport spokesman said at 2.40pm today: ‘Following an aircraft incident, the runway is temporarily closed. We apologise for the inconvenience this will cause.

‘We will keep passengers already at the airport informed, and those due to travel later today are advised to check the status of their flight before coming to the airport. We will continue to issue updates when we can.’

A West Midlands Police spokesman said: ‘We are at Birmingham Airport this afternoon after a small aircraft was involved in an emergency landing at around 1.40pm.

‘Officers are among the emergency crews at the scene and one person has been reported to have minor injuries.

‘The Civil Aviation Authority has been informed and the airport has suspended operations as an investigation is carried out.’

The airport’s website also appeared to have gone down, with users greeted by a message saying: ‘Bad gateway. Error code 502.’

Birmingham is the UK’s seventh-largest airport in the UK and handled about 13million passengers last year, with over 130 direct routes offered by 30 airlines.

The disruption comes during the peak summer holiday season, and follows chaos at Heathrow yesterday when the airport was forced to shut a road tunnel connecting to Terminals 2 and 3.

Roads leading up to the airport were gridlocked due to the closure, with some desperate flyers sprinting down the motorway with their luggage to catch their flights.

It was the second incident to cause delays at the airport in just one week after an IT issue with a National Air Traffic Services (NATS) centre last Wednesday led to more than 150 flight cancellations across the country.

The Southend Airport tragedy on July 13 saw a Beech B200 Super King Air on a medical flight crash within the airport boundary shortly after take-off that afternoon.

Captain Danny Marko Franken, 53, and First Officer Floris Christiaan Rhee, 24, were piloting the plane chartered for a patient to be transported for treatment in the UK.

The two pilots were on board with a female nurse and a male doctor, with the Zeusch Aviation plane bound for its Netherlands base after dropping off a patient.

The nurse was named as Maria Fernanda Rojaz Ortiz, 31, a German national originally from Chile, and the doctor was German national Dr Matthias Eyl, 46.

Footage showed fire and black smoke billowing into the air from the crash site, while witnesses described seeing the jet ‘corkscrew’ before erupting into a ball of flames.

An investigation is underway into the cause of the crash in Essex involving the Super King Air, which is often used for mapping and for medivac journeys.

The plane had completed two trips that day, one from Athens in Greece to Pula in Croatia and then from Pula to Southend, landing in the UK at 2.51pm.

The crash happened at 3.48pm and led to all flights in and out of the airport, which is used by easyJet for many of its holiday routes, being suspended.

The airport was closed while an early investigation was carried out but it partially reopened three days later and resumed normal operations from July 17.