Birmingham Airport reopens after plane crash

Birmingham International Airport reopened this morning, two days after a plane crash in which five people died.

Full flight schedules had resumed and no further disruption is expected, an airport spokesman said.

The airport reopened at 11.55am and the first aircraft to arrive, a Lufthansa jet from Frankfurt, touched down 10 minutes later.

The first plane to leave the airport was a charter service which was relocating to Gatwick, with no passengers on board.

In the 48 hours since the crash, 400 flights have been cancelled or diverted and 30,000 passengers have been affected, the spokesman said.

Three flight crew and two senior executives with the American agricultural equipment giant AGCO Corporation died in Friday’s accident, which happened when a private Challenger jet crashed in flames shortly after take-off.

The plane was heading for Bangor, Maine, after the executives had visited a company plant in Coventry.

The businessmen were named as AGCO Corporation president and chief executive officer John Shumejda, 54, and senior vice president for sales and marketing, Ed Swingle, 59.

The two black box flight recorders from the plane have been recovered and been taken to Farnborough, where experts were examining them in an attempt to determine the cause of the crash.