Easter Sunday flight to Barbados halted ahead of take-off at Manchester Airport

An Easter Sunday flight to Barbados from Manchester has been aborted ahead of take-off.

Thomson flight TOM108 was on the runway when it was halted over ‘smoke under the carriage’.

The runway was shut down while the plane, which had been due to head to the Barbados capital Bridgetown at 10.45am, was met by fire engines.

It has been escorted back to the apron for inspection, with passengers understood to be still on board.

A Manchester Airport spokeswoman confirmed the incident, but said the cause was not yet known. Despite speculation, a burst tyre has been ruled out as a cause for the abandoned take-off.

The airport spokeswoman added on Sunday lunchtime that operations had restarted on the runway and if there were any knock-on delays they would be minimal.

Watch the video of the plane on the runway below:

This is the fourth plane to be met by emergency services this Easter weekend.

On Saturday, a Thomas Cook Airlines flight to Las Vegas was aborted when it reached the Irish Sea due to a ‘suspected technical fault’, returning safely to Manchester.

Just five hours later, another Thomson plane carried out an emergency landing at Manchester airport, with eye witnesses reporting that the flight came in ‘way too fast’, using the entire runway to come to a halt.

The captain of the Thomson Airways flight TOM6606 had aborted a planned trip to Las Palmas moments after taking off from Bristol Airport and then headed north to Manchester.

Thomson apologised to passengers and said a ‘technical fault’ was to blame for the diversion to Manchester.

And on Friday night, more than 20 members of two different stag parties were escorted off a flight from Manchester Airport to Prague after reports of drink-fuelled rowdy behaviour.

The Jet2 service was taxiing to the runway when the captain decided to return to the terminal and call police - the resulting episode led to the flight being delayed by at least three hours.

Thomson has been contacted for comment over the latest incident.