Mail pilots battle high winds to deliver gifts

A Royal Mail plane circled a remote Scots island for two hours while battling high winds before the crew managed to land safely and deliver Christmas presents to grateful locals.

The Loganair flight from Inverness to Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides, was buffeted by Storm Pia on Thursday afternoon, but pilots persevered and managed to bring the craft down safely after several attempts.

Roddy Mackay, 52, lives directly underneath the flight path on the island and was monitoring the drama on radar equipment.

“The weather was horrific and it was an absolutely superb effort by the crew,” he told The Sunday Post. “I was watching the aircraft circling and criss-crossing the island for at least a couple of hours and heard it passing overhead a number of times.

“The sheer skill and persistence of the crew made sure that a lot of Christmas presents and orders arrived with us on time. We are very grateful.”

The weather had caused havoc across the UK, with flights having to be diverted from Manchester Airport due to high winds.

Loganair said first officer Daniel Ledwood and captain Euan Patrick were responsible for landing the plane and delivering the gifts.

Maurice Boyle, chief operations officer at Loganair, said: “We know how important it is to get mail delivered to the remote communities we serve, especially at Christmas.

“With our cargo flights we have a bit more flexibility than we do on our scheduled services, and if the weather is marginal we can load extra fuel to enable mail planes to hold overhead until the wind abates enough for the pilots to complete a safe approach and landing.

“The nature of our services mean our pilots have extensive experience in flying in a range of weather conditions and it’s all in a day’s work.”

He added: “Safety does of course remain our top priority, and we thank our customers for their patience around any changes we had to make to our scheduled services this week due to Storm Pia.”