EZY Emergancy into MAN?
 

Really? Source is iffy

It showed up on planefinder, making the U turn back to Manchester 35 miles from departure and landed again.
And there was another earlier today when another Easyjet A320 left Liverpool and made a U turn over the Wirral and back to L'Pool.
Correction, the Liverpool flight, G-EZFOR, EZY19HG, actually made the U turn over Barnsley.
The Manchester flight was G-EZFA EZY16CR bound for Hamburg

It must be the day for it. A Virgin 747, G-VROM, outbound from Gatwick got as far as Exeter and did the U Trun exercise. Now approaching Southampton en route back to Gatwick.

Ophelia causing sand in atmosphere.
 

There is a lot of sand in the atmosphere at the moment due to Ophelia. Google " red sun" for some spectacular photo's. Could this be the cause?

3pm near LGW and it is almost as dark as night. Despite that METAR reads 9999 4000W SCT018.

It's because of the forest fires in Spain/Portugal. Eurocontrol just released an information.

Smoke from forest fires, coupled with Saharan sand in the atmosphere. The haze has been present all over the North-West, North East the East Midlands, and much of Scotland, and elsewhere. Quite a few pictures on the internet.

I have a friend on VS15. Her daughter didn't even look up from her ipad apparently despite the burning smell. Perhaps a little too laid back?:}

I'm located about 15 miles NW of MAN, very noticeable yellow haze this morning and until around 3PM. Also cars etc covered in sand.

Flybe E195 G-FBEM Cardiff>Dublin & Flybe E175 Cardiff>Paris CDG G-FBJA both experienced the same issue today.

That all figures, near Warwick we had a dark yellow haze around lunch time and the car had a new coating of dust without even moving, clear by 1500

Even more than that apparently -
I'm still noob status so can't post the link but RAF Swanwick tweeted about 7 fume incidents.

I was down in Brittany today. Very dark from about 0900 Z until late afternoon. Never seen it as dark as this during what should be "broad daylight" before. Ophelia & forest fires & Saharan sand seem to be the reason. Also, it looked like the heavens were going to open (very black, heavy clouds); but, they never did.

I'm assuming it's a "blip"but flightracker and flightaware are showing VS15 as having diverted to Bermuda now on the second attempt to get to MCO.

edit: nope - medical emergency :(

What exactly is an "emergancy"? :ugh:

Oh dear, one of the ‘best’ first post in ages........:ugh:

Nothing head banging about it. Unusual atmospherics and I heard three aircraft at LHR report burning odours at altitude. Several aircraft did declare emergencies, LHR and DUB but obviously I don't know all the finer details.

Not quite volcanic ash and 00's of cancelled flights. What was the outcome of this? A/C turned back, 'ground tested found satis', then what? Did they takeoff again or were they cancelled. And then what? Compensation? What about later flights? Reports like this need to be complete, i.e. reported to a final conclusion and not be left open ended.

VS15 I can expand on a little bit -

Departed Gatwick as usual around 1245UTC, fumes in cockpit. Passengers hear the word Mayday. Returned to Gatwick with emergency vehicles in attendance. Remained on the plane, eventually refueled and then departed Gatwick again around 17:15.

Mid-flight a baby was taken unwell so the decision was taken to divert to Bermuda. Crew unsurprisingly were out of hours so overnighted there, then bad weather prevented delay until it eventually got away and arrived at MCO at 0100UTC - so some 36 hours after it first left GLW :eek: