Thousands of passengers flying to Edinburgh airport on Saturday and Sunday found their planes diverted to other locations.
The reason: urgent repairs to the runway at Scotland’s busiest airport due to break-up possibly “exacerbated by the weather conditions”.
Problems began on Saturday, when six flights were diverted. Ryanair arrivals from Pisa in Italy and Knock in Ireland landed at Glasgow, while a flight from London Stansted touched down at Newcastle.
Air France’s arrival from Paris CDG landed at Glasgow, which was also the destination for two easyJet domestic flights – from Birmingham and Bristol.
An Aer Lingus flight from Dublin turned around while over Northern Ireland and flew back to the Irish capital.
The scale of disruption on Sunday was twice as bad, with a dozen flights diverted to four airports while the runway was closed for 74 minutes.
Glasgow received arrivals on Ryanair from Palma; SAS from Stockholm; easyJet from Lisbon and Venice; Jet2 from Faro; and Norwegian from Copenhagen.
Nearby Prestwick airport, on the Ayrshire coast, handled British Airways from Florence, Vueling from Barcelona and Jet2 from Preveza in Greece.
Jet2 flights from Alicante and Dubrovnik touched down in Newcastle.
A single arrival – Loganair from Kirkwall in Orkney – landed in Dundee.
Most flights waited on the ground to continue their flights to Edinburgh. Hundreds of departing passengers from the Scottish capital were delayed – with one easyJet trip to Berlin and back cancelled after the aircraft was earlier diverted to Glasgow.
Passengers were told: “This is due to a runway closure in Edinburgh resulting in emergency repair works.
“Your flight was further delayed due to air traffic control restrictions which delayed your flight outside of the opening hours of your departure airport.”
The Ryanair flight to Naples, using the aircraft from Palma which had been diverted to Glasgow, was 90 minutes late.
A spokesperson for Edinburgh airport said: “Arrivals and departures were suspended for a short period while our team carried out minor repairs on the airfield.
“This work has since been completed and operations have resumed. Safety is our priority and we thank passengers for their patience.”
The break-up on each day was in a different location. The spokesperson said: “Both seem to be exacerbated by the weather conditions. Whilst we can’t rule out further break ups, we do have an extensive monitoring regime and these instances are thankfully rare.”
