A plane spotter could hardly believe what he was witnessing when an Aer Lingus flight landed heavily on Sunday at Belfast City Airport — skidding down the runway in a shower of sparks.
Four crew members were aboard but no one was injured.
Michail Savekin was snapping the twin-engined aircraft as it came in around 4pm during one of the airport’s busiest weekends of the year.
The Aer Lingus-run Emerald Air regional flight from Edinburgh slammed nose first onto the tarmac after the front gear collapsed, prompting emergency services to rush to the scene.
All operations were suspended overnight, with flights diverted to Belfast International and Dublin Airports.
Belfast City reopened yesterday morning.
Michail said: “I’ve never seen anything like it before.
“Sometimes you would see pilots circling around for a second attempt at a landing, but something as dramatic as that doesn’t happen very often.
“I’d just gone to Belfast to the cinema, and as I do like plane spotting I thought I’d round off the day at the airport for a bit of fun.
“It was all a bit of a shock, to be honest. They’re probably the best plane photos I’ve managed to get.
“There were some really strong gusts of wind around, but I didn’t expect to catch anything like that.
“I know I’d just been to the movies, but it was like I was still in the cinema.
“It was a bit chaotic — you just don’t expect something like that to happen.”
The aircraft with its nose on the ground and tail lifted (Michail Savekin)
The Air Accident Investigation Branch said: “An investigation has begun into an accident involving a fixed-wing aircraft which occurred at Belfast City Airport.
“AAIB inspectors have commenced the on-site investigation to gather evidence and make enquiries.”
The airport yesterday urged passengers to check the status of their flights before travelling due to aircraft being out of position.
Sunday evening flights with Aer Lingus, KLM, British Airways and easyJet were cancelled, impacting passengers trying to get to cities including Amsterdam, London, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool.
Travel expert Simon Calder said the knock-on effect will be the biggest headache for travellers, as although the runway at Belfast City Airport may be open again, flights will be “far from normal”.
“What we saw at Belfast City Airport was extremely unusual,” he added.
“Suddenly you’re going along from a perfectly normal Sunday afternoon to a situation where all flights are cancelled.
“That is always going to be very difficult in a high pressure situation like an airport.
“We’d already seen major disruption at the UKs busiest airport, London Heathrow, with some 100 flights cancelled and 15,000 people with their travel plans torn up.
“While this certainly wasn’t a ‘crash landing’, aviation is still wind and weather-dependent.
“We had some very high winds on Sunday and this was clearly a very, very difficult landing — that is extremely unusual.”
He said the nature of what happened meant affected passengers will not be eligible for compensation, as the incident was “well beyond the airline’s responsibility”.
“The main thing is that everyone was safe,” he added.
“But what immediately happens is that the runway is blocked and the aircraft is not going anywhere in a hurry. The investigators will want to find out what happened.
“Aer Lingus Regional will be left one aircraft down, which is going to inevitably lead to more cancellations.
“But, in context, we have had another year of unbelievably safe aviation around the world. The UK and Ireland have the safest aviation in the world.
“The only thing I worry about when flying is the disruption that can happen.”
He said the closure of Holyhead port, as well as other ferry cancellations and the situation at Belfast City Airport, mean it is a testing time for people travelling home for Christmas.
Adding to the Sunday night travel chaos, P&O Ferries axed journeys between Larne and Cairnryan due to the weather conditions.