Forced Airport To Close To Inbound Flights For About Three Hours

A Gulfstream G550 landing at Stansted Airport in Essex in the U.K. damaged the airport's ILS transmitter on the runway, forcing the airport to close to arriving flights for about three hours Tuesday.

The BBC reports that the plane landed safely, but low visibility at the airport forced incoming flights to be re-routed to other airports after the ILS went down. A spokesman for the airport said that once the fog lifted, airplanes were able to land visually at Essex. Departing flights were not affected by the incident.

RyanAir reported that several of its inbound flights were directed to land at Birmingham and East Midlands airports.

A spokeswoman for Britain's National Air Traffic System (NATS) said that the transmitter is located at the end of the runway and was struck by the landing bizjet.

Stansted flights were among those interrupted over the weekend after an ATC outage that affected flights at several airports. NATS said engineers are still working to isolate and resolve that issue.

(G550 pictured in file photo. Not incident airplane)

FMI: www.stanstedairport.com