A plane spotter watched on radar a British Airways Boeing 787 ‘circle’ Lewis before emergency landing in Glasgow.
Gibby Falconer (64) who lives on the flight path from Aberdeen Airport and has an aviation background after having served in the Royal Airforce, was watching a flight radar website on his home PC on Sunday evening when he spotted the jet acting in a strange manner.
Raises fears
He said: “I was scanning the Flightradar24 website when the flight path of this particular aircraft took my eye. It was the London Heathrow-Seattle flight and the things that caught my eye was he was at 36,000 feet and then started doing circles around the Isle of Lewis.
“He was deviating from the normal transatlantic flight. He did this circle round the north of the Hebrides a couple of times and then he started heading south east. I tracked him all the way down and he landed in Glasgow just after 5pm.”
He went on: “The fact that this particular aircraft has had well documented problems raises fears. I wouldn’t normally have seen anything wrong with a flight but when it started doing circles over Lewis I thought no something here really isn’t right.”
Safety is paramount
A British Airways spokeswoman confirmed the flight was forced to turn back enroute to Seattle.
She said: “Safety is always our priority and our experienced pilots diverted our flight into Glasgow after they became aware of an indication of a minor technical issue.
“Our engineers are currently investigating while our cabin crew look after our customers. We hope to continue the flight shortly.”
British Airways later confirmed the flight departed at 7.05pm from GLA airport after engineers checked the aircraft over, and has since landed in Seattle.