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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
National
John Dunne

Glasgow flight declares emergency after 'onboard medical emergency'

Glasgow Airport - (PA Archive)

Flight crew declared an emergency minutes before landing at Glagow airport after a medical incident on board.

Flight BA8722 left London City Airport at 1.30pm on Monday but just minutes before the plane was set to land the plane raised the alarm.

The Embraer ERJ-190, a 100-passenger aircraft used for short-haul flights, was granted an earlier landing slot at the pilot’s request, Travel and Tour World reported.

The flight sent out a 7700 transponder signal which flags an emergency.

Emergency services were scrambled to Glasgow Airport before the aircraft came into landing.

British Airways told The Independent that there was a medical emergency on board involving an elderly passenger.

They added that the aircraft landed normally and touched down in Glasgow at 2.10pm, ten minutes before its slot.

A passenger posted on X that the crew were “true professionals” throughout the incident.

She wrote: “Kudos to team on BA8722 today for their calm, kindness and discretion in dealing with a medical emergency today.”

In a separate incident a Turkish Airlines pilot died while flying a passenger plane from the US to Turkey which forced the crew to make an emergency landing in New York.

Ilcehin Pehlivan, 59, the captain on the plane, fainted during the flight from Seattle, Washington, to Istanbul, which reportedly took off at around 7pm on Tuesday.

The crew staged a medical intervention but it was “ineffective”, Turkish Airlines spokesperson Yahya Ustun wrote on X.

The flight’s co-pilot made an emergency landing in New York but the captain lost his life before the plane landed.

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