{"id":18788,"date":"2013-01-07T23:41:53","date_gmt":"2013-01-07T22:41:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/uk.news.yahoo.com\/airport-closes-spitfire-landing-drama-224153380.html"},"modified":"2013-01-07T23:41:53","modified_gmt":"2013-01-07T22:41:53","slug":"airport-closes-after-spitfire-landing-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/airport-closes-after-spitfire-landing-drama\/","title":{"rendered":"Airport Closes After Spitfire Landing Drama"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p class=\"first\">A runway at East Midlands airport was closed for almost three hours after the undercarriage of a World War Two Spitfire collapsed on landing.<\/p>\n<p>Airport officials said the plane&#8217;s undercarriage failed as it touched down. Luckily, the pilot was unharmed.<\/p>\n<p>The incident happened at 3.19pm and the runway was reopened at 6pm after the Spitfire was removed.<\/p>\n<p>An airport spokesman said: &#8220;The airport has been working hard to remove the aircraft from the runway.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;During this time, flights were temporarily suspended with seven aircraft diverted to Birmingham Airport.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The aircraft has now been towed from the runway and after a final runway inspection, flights resumed at 6pm.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Passengers should continue to check in as normal and the airport is now fully operational<\/p>\n<p>Spitfires played a crucial role in the Battle of Britain when the single-seat fighter helped beat back waves of German bombers.<\/p>\n<p>More than 20,000 were built, although only a few dozen remain in working order today.<\/p>\n<p>Rolls Royce, which built the Merlin engines used to power the fighters, bought the Spitfire involved in the landing drama in 1996.<\/p>\n<p>The Rolls-Royce Spitfire as it became known, is based in a dedicated hangar at East Midlands Airport and is usually seen at airshows and corporate functions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/pixel.quantserve.com\/pixel\/p-89EKCgBk8MZdE.gif\" border=\"0\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A runway at East Midlands airport was closed for almost three hours after the undercarriage of a World War Two Spitfire collapsed on landing.<br \/>\nAirport officials said the plane&#8217;s undercarriage failed as it touched down. Luckily, the pilot was unharmed.<br \/>\n&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1213,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-18788","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18788\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}