Plane drama as winds batter airport

HIGH winds forced an Inverness-bound plane abort a planned landing and divert to Edinburgh.

The Easyjet EZY763 from London was expected at Dalcross at 3.25pm today (Thursday) and was in a holding pattern above Dalcross when weather conditions dramatically worsened.

A decision was taken that it should change course, initially to Glasgow. The flight path was then changed to Edinburgh

This means the scheduled flight back to Gatwick from Inverness, which should have left at 3.55pm, was cancelled.

An airport spokeswoman said no decision had been made on five other flights which were still due to take off and land at Inverness.

One passenger who got in touch with the Highland News using our new Twitter page said: "We had to divert. It was an aborted landing as the weather was shockingly bad and is forecast to get worse."

Airport manager Graeme Bell said: "We're doing everything we can to those passengers affected as comfortable as possible. We had hoped to bus a number of passengers to Glasgow to get flights from there but we have since heard the A9 is shut southbound, so that option is not now available."