'Nightmare' as plane wheel collapse drama wreaks disruption to flights at Belfast City Airport

​Footage taken by plane-spotted Michail Savekin showed an Aer Lingus plane, operated by Emerald Airlines, at a nose-heavy angle as it touched down at about 4pm.

It appears the front wheel column then broke, and the plane skidded along.

It had been flying in from Edinburgh.

The runway was closed for hours afterwards, with at least four flights diverted to Belfast International Airport and others cancelled.

The plane – a turboprop model known as an ATR 72-600, with capacity for up to 78 passengers – was later towed off the runway using a tractor.

By 5.40am on Monday, the airport said the runway had reopened and was “operating as normal”.

On the Facebook group Airside NI, Mr Savekin had posted up that the plane’s front landing gear “collapsed after it suffered a terribly hard landing”.

It “hit the nose gear the first time and bounced real high, and then the gear hit the ground again”.

Conditions at the time were understood to be windy.

There were no passengers on board, just four crew members – none of whom were reported injured.

But it was a stressful time for those dealing with the fallout.

Speaking to the BBC was Hilary Bratton, who had been flying from Leeds Bradford Airport to Belfast at the time of the accident.

"During the flight the captain came on to say there was a problem at Belfast City," she said on Monday, adding that this was only about 10 minutes before her aircraft was due to touch down.

"It was very tense. We were just circling Belfast City for a long time and to be honest, it was just very quiet... everybody was just a bit nervous.”

She added that when they did touch down “we then had to wait another 25 minutes before they would get the bus to get us off the plane into the terminal, and then it took another 25 minutes to get the luggage".

One woman who gave her name as ‘Emma’ said that she had been scheduled to fly home from Liverpool on Sunday afternoon but that the plane was first delayed, then cancelled, and she had to stay overnight in a hotel.

"It was a nightmare," she said.

One user on Airside NI wrote that “I hope the flight crew are doing ok ‘cause that’s pretty much ruined their Christmas. They will be under a lot of stress right now. There, but for the grace of God...”

A statement from Emerald Airlines, quoted on the website Simpleflying.com, said: "The positioning flight, EA701P, with no passengers onboard, flying from Edinburgh to Belfast City Airport, December 22, 2024, experienced a hard landing upon arriving due to the adverse weather conditions."

The Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) has opened an investigation.

It comes just three weeks after the AAIB issued a report into an accident at Belfast International Airport.

On that occasion, a plane (with two crew and no passengers) had been forced to land on March 7, 2023, without a functioning