Plane spotters were alarmed this afternoon when an aeroplane flew low over Brighton after declaring an emergency.
Gatwick Airport’s runway was closed to allow the Air China flight CA852 perform an emergency landing after running into trouble en route from Gatwick to Beijing.
Marian Cleary caught the plane flying over the city’s rooftops and posted this video on YouTube:
She said: “I had seen on Twitter via a friend in Japan that a flight had declared an emergency, not expecting that it was from Gatwick and then to see it later fly over my house on its way back!”
The emergency was thought to be due to faulty landing gear. It sent out a “squawk” code 7700, which is the international signal for an unspecified emergency.
After performing several loops over the Channel south of Newhaven to dump fuel, it headed back to Gatwick, flying low over Brighton.
The pilots landed the Airbus safely but Gatwick was closed for about 20 minutes at 3.20pm with some incoming flights diverted to Stansted.
The reason for landing was not immediately known but police were not seen on the scene after it landed.
Bitgood took this footage of the plane at Gatwick:
