An Easy Jet flight suffered a bird strike on landing at Newcastle causing long delays for passengers.

The flight, codenamed EZY69, from Belfast to Newcastle on Friday (May 26) suffered a bird strike as it came in to land at Newcastle Airport.

A bird strike is where an airborne animal hits the aircraft, potentially causing serious damage to the plane and often resulting in pilots declaring an emergency.

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The majority happen when planes are taking off or coming into land.

Engineers inspected the aircraft on arrival, with Easy Jet saying the safety of passengers is its utmost priority.

But passengers waiting to board the return flight, known as EZY70, back to Belfast faced a lengthy nine-hour delay while they waited to find out if they plane was ok to fly.

The plane, an Airbus A320, was due to take passengers from Newcastle to Belfast at 11.05am, but did not take off until 8.15pm.

An Easy Jet spokesperson said: “Easy Jet can confirm that flight EZY70 from Newcastle to Bristol on May 26 was delayed due to a bird strike on arrival into Newcastle.

“As per procedure, the aircraft was carefully inspected by engineers upon arrival, before being authorized to continue its journey to Bristol.

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“Passengers were kept updated on the reasons for the delay via flight tracker and SMS, and our ground staff issued vouchers to get refreshments throughout the wait at the airport.

“The safety of passengers and crew is EasyJet's highest priority and while this was outside of out control we have apologised to customers for any inconvenience caused by the delay and thank them for their patience and understanding.”

Earlier this month a KLM flight was forced to declare an emergency on landing after the nose wheel of the plane broke.