A broken-down executive jet at Reina Sofía airport in Tenerife led to 20 commercial airliners being diverted and one Edinburgh-bound easyJet flight being diverted to Madrid overnight.
The plane landed at Tenerife South at 5.45pm on Thursday (2/1) but suffered a technical fault on the runway which left it temporarily immobilised.
It took several hours to tow the plane off the tarmac to allow other planes to land, which resulted in 20 incoming flights being diverted to other Canary Islands – most of them coming from the UK.
Ryanair passengers from Birmingham and Manchester and those on a Tui flight from Norwich were diverted to Tenerife North airport, which is only an hour away from their intended destination by road.
But some ended up in Las Palmas, Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, flying on to their intended destination once the runway at Tenerife reopened.
Those most severely hit were on board the easyJet flight to Edinburgh, which had to be diverted to Madrid due to out of hours issues affecting the crew.
The flight will operate back from the Spanish capital to Scotland this evening (3/1), 24 hours late.
A spokesperson for easyJet said: “Following the temporary runway closure of Tenerife airport, easyJet, like all airlines, experienced some disruption to its operations to and from Tenerife.
“We are making every effort to get customers to their destination and any customers whose flights are disrupted due to the impact of the runway closure are being notified and provided with options to rebook or receive a refund as well as hotel accommodation and meals where needed.”