Loganair passengers suffered further travel misery this week after a worker got stuck while trying to clear ice off a plane in a hailstorm.
The employee was in a large bucket hoisted above an aircraft at Stornoway airport on Sunday.
But Loganair’s de-icing rig broke down with a hydraulic fault, leaving the airline employee stuck at height in freezing conditions.
He was rescued by the airport’s fire service, but the rest of Sunday’s flights were cancelled since the de-icer was out of action.
The situation compounded a day of travel chaos for Stornoway travellers on Sunday and created further lengthy knock-on delays yesterday.
One islander who waited spent most of Sunday at Stornoway Airport waiting for a flight to depart said the situation was “comical.”
He called it “another pre-Christmas pantomime from the Loganair/FlymayBe partnership.”
He added: “If the first two planes had not gone tech then the storm would have been irrelevant and that poor boy who got stuck up on the de-icer in a hail storm might have been spared.”
A spokesperson for airport operator Hial said: “The airport fire service responded to the difficult weather conditions and worked hard to ensure that all aircraft arriving into Stornoway could land safely.
“This required us to close the airfield for short periods on Sunday afternoon to allow operational teams to clear the airfield of snow.
“We obviously regret any disruption to passengers but safety is our top priority and our teams are trained to ensure that the airfield is in a suitable and safe condition for use.”
A spokesperson for Loganair, said: “Due to a problem with Loganair’s de-icing rig at Stornoway Airport, a number of services were disrupted.”