NORTH-EAST holidaymakers had to spend the night in London hotels after their aeroplane was forced to make an emergency landing.

A Mytravel plane with 220 passengers on board, travelling to Malta from Newcastle, was forced to divert to Gatwick airport after a warning light came on in the cockpit.

The Airbus left Newcastle airport at 5.30pm on Tuesday, already more than an hour late due to a cabin staff shortage.

But 45 minutes into the journey, a warning light came on, showing an indicator was not working and the captain took the decision to divert to Gatwick.

Emergency crews were standing by, but the plane landed safely and passengers got off using the usual exits.

They were put up overnight in Gatwick hotels and set off for Malta at 11am yesterday.

A spokeswoman for Mytravel said: "We had a technical fault on the aircraft. For safety, we had to land in Gatwick at around 6pm.

"Unfortunately, we weren't able to turn it around as quickly as we would have liked, so we had to put the passengers into hotels overnight."