Not planes with technical issues, but training flights

PEOPLE living near East Midlands Airport have noticed a strange phenomenon in the skies – Ryanair jets taking off, circling around and then coming back to land.

Sometimes they don’t even touch down, but pull up moments before hitting the runway and soar off into the sky again.

Some observers might think these unusual manoeuvres are planes experiencing technical difficulties – but they are actually just practice flights.

As one of the less busy passenger terminals, East Midlands Airport has recently been chosen by Ryanair for pilot training.

About 830,000 passengers passed through the airport in 2021 – along with a huge amount of cargo – with Ryanair fights going to destinations including Malta, Rome, Tenerife and Majorca. But it still has capacity for well over 1,000 training flights every year.

On FlightRadar, a popular website which allows users to track any flight in the world at a given time, some flights are listed as scheduled Ryanair flights from East Midlands to Shannon, in the Republic of Ireland.

But Ryanair does not take passengers to Shannon – only to Dublin and, sometimes, Knock.

The Shannon flights are the training flights that take off and land again at East Midlands.

Cadets must undertake several take-off and landing attempts to qualify and as a result can often be seen looping around the airport as part of their training.

The plane which is seen looping around is always the same one – Ryanair flight number 100T. The flights can be as short as 20 minutes to nearly two hours, in some cases.

The plane used is a Boeing 737-73S aircraft, whereas the company usually uses Boeing 737-800 planes on its passenger routes.

In 2021, 1,413 test and training flights were made from EMA, according to data from the CAA.