He was bound for China at the time.
LONDON - A passenger jet landed short of the runway at Heathrow airport on Thursday, forcing Prime Minister Gordon Brown to delay his trip to China.Fortunately no one was seriously hurt on the BA flight.Brown was in another plane on the runway waiting to take off but his plane was not involved in the incident.
The plane that landed short was a British Airways flight BA38 from Beijing to London, British Airways said. The Boeing 777 made an emergency landing, airport operator BAA PLC. Fire trucks surrounded the aircraft and emergency evacuation chutes were deployed.
"Passengers have been evacuated and there are currently no reported injuries," BAA said in a statement.
The pilot of the plane carrying Brown and accompanying journalists to Beijing said all departures and arrivals had been suspended for safety reasons because all the airports' emergency crews were responding to the incident.
The closure of an airport temporarily after an incident isn't unusual. I was at Washington National the day a Air Florida plane went down in the Potomac. The airport was closed after the incident.
Maybe PM Gordon Brown will learn something from this experience. Like how it is to have your flight delayed and be inconvenienced. Some 14.5 months ago my wife was returning from a trip to the Philippines. Her flight out of Manila was delayed. What for? The incoming flight from Hong Kong of Philippine President Arroyo. The PAL flight my wife was on being delayed long enough that she and many other passengers had to have connecting flights in the US rebooked.
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Tags: British Airways, Gordon Brown
