An Alicante-Elche airport bound flight diverted to Manchester Airport after taking off from Glasgow, due to a medical emergency.

“This flight from Glasgow to Alicante (03 Apr) diverted to Manchester Airport after a passenger became ill on board,” said a Ryanair spokeswoman.

“The crew called ahead, to request medical assistance on arrival, the aircraft landed normally, the customer disembarked and was met by medics.

“The flight safely continued to Alicante shortly after and Ryanair apologises to all customers for this short delay,” added the spokeswoman.

The Ryanair flight FR2522 bound for Alicante departed from the Scottish airport at 8.47pm, diverted after being in the air for approximately 30 minutes.

The flight route on flight tracking website Flightradar24 showed the plane turning round in the Shropshire area of England, before heading north to Manchester Airport.

Police force, fire and rescue services could be drafted in to Manchester Airport

Meanwhile staff from the police force and fire and rescue services could be drafted in to help tackle the chaos at Manchester Airport.

Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham is to meet with the management of the airport to discuss the situation after a weekend of long delays for passengers, with reports of people jumping over barriers, jostling for space and abandoning their luggage as reported by The Leader.

Manchester Airport said the situation is blamed on staff shortages.

“I have been in touch with colleagues at Greater Manchester Police at the weekend to see what we can do to support the airport,” said mayor Burnham.

“It’s a difficult moment for airports around the world – having laid low for the pandemic – they’ve had to scale up very quickly. We understand the challenges that we’ve got.

“But at the same time, we don’t want to see the scenes that we saw at the weekend.

“We obviously need to work with them to work through those issues and make sure we’re managing those things and giving the right information to the public and being clear about the plan to get things to an acceptable level,” added mayor Burnham.