A US military plane has declared a mid-air emergency just minutes after taking off from a Scots airport.
The McDonnell Douglas KC-10A Extender, with callsign ROMA91, took off from Prestwick Airport in Ayrshire at around 10.06am on Thursday.
It declared a Squawk 7700 emergency at around 10.12am.
It is not yet known what sparked the emergency call, however a Squawk 7700 is used to identify an aircraft that has a possible issue and enables it to have priority over other air traffic.
The plane, which is operated by the US Air Force, made the U-turn while travelling over the Firth of Clyde.
FlightRadar maps show the aircraft having circled several times before heading back to land at Prestwick.
This is the third of such incident to be recorded in recent days.
We previously told how an Eastern Airways flight, operating on the Aberdeen to Sumburgh route, declared the emergency on Tuesday morning.
And on Thursday a cargo plane from Charles De Gaulle Airport in France had to turn back while en route to Edinburgh after the crew experienced an issue with a door.
The Herald has approached the US Air Force for comment.
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel