Sign up to Simon Calder’s free travel email for expert advice and money-saving discounts
Get Simon Calder’s Travel email
Get Simon Calder’s Travel email
Edinburgh airport briefly suspended all flights this afternoon following the diversion of a British Airways aircraft.
FlightAware data shows British Airways flight BA1443 to London Heathrow circling back to Edinburgh shortly after takeoff.
According to the airline, a “technical issue” was identified by pilots, prompting them to issue a 7700 emergency squawk code.
A 7700 squawk code is an aviation signal to air traffic control that an aircraft needs priority handling.
The London-bound Airbus A320 had departed Edinburgh at 11.13am to make the hour-and-a-half journey.
The Scottish airport shared in a statement on social media at 1.10pm: “Operations are currently suspended while teams respond to an aircraft issue. The aircraft landed safely and remains on the runway.
“Passengers are being taken back to the terminal via coaches and teams are carrying out inspections before operations resume. Updates to follow.”
Flights arriving and departing at the airport were suspended for around 40 minutes while the “aircraft was towed off of the runway and onto a stand by the airline’s handling agent”.
A later update from Edinburgh airport announced that operations have now resumed following the incident this afternoon.
It said: “Safety is always paramount and we would like to thank passenger for their patience and understanding. Thank you also to our teams who responded and have worked to resume operations.”
A spokesperson from British Airways told The Independent: “The aircraft returned to Edinburgh airport safely after our pilots identified a technical issue after take-off.
“We’ve apologised to our customers for the disruption to their journey and our teams are working hard to get them on their way as soon as possible.”
The incident is the second time in a week that operations have been suspended in Edinburgh.
All flights were halted at Edinburgh airport on Friday due to an IT issue with air traffic control.
The airport explained on social media platform X that the outage was a localised issue, and advised customers to contact their airline for information about their flight.
Read more: What rights do you have to compensation for cancelled or delayed flights?
