UK's Birmingham Airport temporarily shuts after plane's landing gear failure forces emergency landing

LONDON (REUTERS)

Birmingham Airport in central England temporarily shut its only runway on Wednesday after a small aircraft made an emergency landing after developing landing gear problems that left one person with minor injuries.

Woodgate Aviation, a private charter firm that is based at Belfast International Airport and owns the Beech B200 Super King Air plane, said in a statement that the "main under-carriage collapsed on touch down."

Birmingham Airport said in a later update on Wednesday that the runway was likely to remain close until 2000 local time (1900 GMT).

All people on board the aircraft had been discharged by the emergency services.

Check-in services and security screening were temporarily closed, it added.

The police said in a post on X that emergency crews responded to the incident, which occurred at around 1240 GMT.

Images shared on social media showed a small propeller aircraft stationary on the runway of Britain's seventh busiest airport.

The aircraft took off at 1211 local time and was bound for Belfast in Northern Ireland, according to plane tracking website Flightradar24.

The airport website showed that some flights have been diverted to other British airports and some departures have been canceled or delayed.

The airport, which served some 13 million passengers last year, is Britain's third largest outside London.