DALLAS — The United Kingdom's Leeds-Bradford Airport (LBA) was forced to divert and cancel all its operations yesterday, October 20, after a TUI Airways (BY) Boeing 737 experienced a runway excursion during landing.
The aircraft, registered as G-TAWD, was a Boeing 737-800 operating the regular service BY3551 from Corfu (CFU) to Leeds, scheduled to arrive at 13:55 local time. However, due to unfavorable weather conditions and strong winds, the airframe could not follow the centerline and dove into the left-hand grass field.
This caused the immediate closure of runway 14 at LBA, and as it is the only serviceable one at the airfield, all expected arrivals and departures had to be diverted or canceled. More than 60 flights were affected, either delayed or canceled.
Leeds is Fully Functional Again
After the successful evacuation of passengers from flight BY3551 and the completion of repairs to the runway and safety areas, LBA has reopened and is now operating normally.
The first aircraft to have touched down back in Bradford after the reopening was Jet2 (LS) flight LS376 from Mahon (MAH), which still arrived with a 1:30h delay after waiting at its origin airport to gain permission to start its journey to the UK safely.
The Airways team monitored the process of retrieving the affected Boeing 737-800 jet from the end of the runway, which can be seen in the featured image above.
Featured image: Roberto Leiro/Airways
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