Bird Strike And Power Cut Delay Flight

Passengers on an Easyjet flight faced a delay of nearly six hours yesterday because their plane was hit by birds and had to be inspected for safety reasons.

The passengers for the Luton flight, due to depart at 7am yesterday, spent hours between the runway and the terminal building before finally taking off at 1.50pm.

Easyjet said a bird strike meant the plane had to undergo a safety inspection but was then delayed due to a power cut at Belfast International Airport.

The certification needed to clear the flight for take-off was delayed as computers could not be accessed.

Passengers said they had been on board the aircraft for around two hours when some passengers were offered the option to leave the aircraft and catch an alternative flight.

Shortly after that, all of the remaining passengers were asked to disembark and return to the terminal.

After engineers had inspected the plane, passengers were allowed to re-board at around 12:30 BST.

But they then waited for nearly another hour and a half for the plane’s certification to arrive.

EasyJet spokesman Andrew McConnell said: "The aircraft operating the inbound flight experienced a bird strike during landing and needed to undergo a mandatory safety inspection by our engineers. However, due to a power supply failure at Belfast International Airport this inspection took longer than we had hoped. Although the cause of the delay was outside of EasyJet's control we would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused.”

Flight time from Belfast International to Luton is just an hour and ten minutes in normal circumstances.

(NE)