Pilot Who Landed Jet at Wrong Airport Taken Off Flying Duties

By LYNN JOLLY

THE bungling pilot who made a plane daft mistake by landing at the WRONG airport has been grounded.

He is banned from the cockpit while his blunder is probed.

The unidentified captain of a Ryanair flight from Liverpool landed his passenger jet at a military air base in Derry instead of the city airport six miles away.

Yesterday a spokesman for Eirjet, which had been chartered by Ryanair, said: "This is normal procedure while we wait for the outcome of the investigation." The jet, with 38 passengers and six crew onboard, touched down at Ballykelly airstrip on Wednesday afternoon. No one was injured.

A Ryanair spokeswoman said it had never experienced an incident like it in its 20-year history.

Yesterday, the Air Accident Investigation confirmed they are investigating the incident. A spokesman said: "We will see what the industry can learn from this.

"We will take our time to get to the bottom of what happened."

The aircraft flew back to Liverpool on Wednesday and was in normal service in Europe yesterday. The British Airline Pilots’ Association appealed for the pilot to keep his job.

Chairman Captain Mervyn Granshaw: " I hope the airline does not summarily dismiss these people because we do need to learn. We have a no-blame, open safety reporting culture.

"We recognise in aviation human beings are fallible, from simple things like putting tea bags in a milk jug to the other end of the spectrum of landing at the wrong runway."

The Republic’s Department of Transport will not probe the incident as it happened in Northern Ireland.

ulster@mirror.co.uk