Plane 'veered off' taxiway after hard landing at Edinburgh Airport

A plane 'veered off' the runway at Edinburgh Airport (Photo: TSPL)

Speaking to the Dundee newspaper The Courier, Lewis Finan was travelling back from Barcelona on Wednesday night with a group of friends when the incident took place.

He told the newspaper of the moment the Vueling Airlines plane "veered off" the taxiway - the part of the airport between the runway and the passenger terminal - and ended up stuck on the grass.

An airport source downplayed the incident and said the pilot of the plane clipped the grass on the way back to its gate, with fire crews attending as a precaution.

The incident happened at around 8.30pm on Wednesday 24 July, with passengers disembarked from the plane on the taxiway safely and taken to the terminal building with the incident over within an hour.

Mr Finan said: "It was a bit of a bump on the way down but I don’t think anyone realised that we’d gone off the taxi-way.

“I looked out the window and saw around three fire engines with their lights flashing surrounding the plane.

“Obviously the pilot had lost control and veered off on to the grass. It felt like the plane landed hard and then rose up again before coming back down.

“Nobody really knew what had happened but he had slammed on the brakes pretty hard.”

Mr Finan also claimed the plane's wheel had "buckled from the impact" which meant the plane was unable to move.

He said: "Engineers appeared quite quickly to change the wheel so they could move it. The plane was actually tilted a couple of degrees to the side once it stopped.”

A spokesman for Edinburgh Airport said: “The aircraft mounted a small portion of the grass verge as it approached its stand and teams responded quickly.

“There was no impact to the airports operations and the situation was resolved swiftly.”