City Airport
Hundreds of passengers had their travel plans disrupted after London City Airport had to close for emergency repairs to its runway.
LCY should have opened at around 6am on Tuesday morning, but an early-morning inspection of the runway found “surface problems” and no flights were possible in or out.
Repairs were completed by lunchtime, but thousands of passengers were unable as intended.
An LCY spokesman denied suggestions that there was a hole in the runway and apologised to passengers for the inconvenience.
Keith Gill tweeted: “London City. It’s a complete nightmare. No communication/updates.”
Andy Richardson wrote: “Chaos at London City this morning causing us problems flying in from Scotland.”
But some passengers were able to see the funny side of things.
Brid Cannon tweeted: “So, nocturnal alien landings leave their mark on runway at London City. Repair crews cleaning up after the ‘visit’.”
An LCY spokesman said on Tuesday: “The runway is inspected each evening before we close around 10.30pm and it’s inspected again before we open around 6am.
“Today’s early inspection found there was a need for maintenance. There is not a hole in the runway but there is a surface problem. There are inconsistencies on the surface of the runway.
“We have a considerable number of people in the terminal at the moment and we are very sorry for all the inconvenience.
“We would normally have handled around 35-40 flights by about 10am today and we hope that with the maintenance completed on the runway we shall be able to open later. But there will be delays.”