A passenger on one of the planes involved in the ‘near miss’ incident at Faro Airport on October 17 said his pilot had to “suddenly take off” because of a troubled easyJet plane on the runway.
Peter A. Fisher told the Algarve Resident that he was on the 8.25pm Ryanair flight from Stansted to Faro, due to land at 11.25pm.
However, “due to very strong tailwinds this was amended to 11.05”.
He said this week: “We were only a few feet off the runway when suddenly we took off at a very acute angle on full power.
“I do not know how near we were to the easyJet plane on the runway but it must have been quite close. The pilot did advise us that there was a problem with an easyJet flight on the runway. We eventually landed at about 11.30pm.”
Despite many attempts to obtain a comment from easyJet and Ryanair on this matter, neither of the airlines was available to comment at the time the Algarve Resident went to press.
ANA Aeroportos Director Dr Rui Oliveira told the Algarve Resident that no such incident happened on Monday, October 17 or there would have been reports about it and he would have been made aware. “The only incident was the technical problem with the easyJet plane,” he said.
Commenting on our report published in the October 21 edition, some posts in the Professional Pilots Rumour Network PPRuNE discussions forum have said the incident was a “standard manoeuvre when a departing plane aborts take-off”.
