THE GERMAN FOOTBALL team were stranded for hours in Edinburgh on Thursday after the plane carrying them home from a World Cup qualifier in Iceland was forced into an unexpected landing.
Germany cruised to a 4-0 win in Reykjavik on Wednesday to go four-points clear at the top of their group, but their plane ran into difficulties during the night flight to Frankfurt.
A spokesperson for Lithuanian charter airline KlasJet told AFP subsidiary SID that a possibly defective power generator on the plane led to the unplanned stopover on the flight.
“At no time during the entire process were passengers exposed to substantially increased risk,” a KlasJet spokeswoman said.
After landing in the Scottish capital, the plane was checked over and a replacement aircraft sent to bring the players home.
“Safety first. Safety stopover as a precaution in Edinburgh,” the German Football Association (DFB) tweeted early on Thursday.
“We’re fine. Safety check on the engine is taking place…”
By 1030GMT, the DFB tweeted they were “sitting in the replacement plane, about to head to Munich and Frankfurt”.
DFB co-interim president Rainer Koch said “it was neither a spectacular nor an emergency landing. You couldn’t be scared at all because the announcement came just before landing that there was going to be a stop for maintenance.
“I was just surprised that I could suddenly see the houses so clearly.”
According to reports not all of the squad were on board.
Germany captain Manuel Neuer, Serge Gnabry and Joshua Kimmich had opted to return separately to their club Bayern Munich.
Premier League players Timo Werner, Ilkay Guendogan, Antonio Ruediger, Bernd Leno and Kai Havertz had also returned separately to their English clubs.
An Edinburgh Airport spokesman told AFP: “We can confirm that a plane asked to make a stop at Edinburgh Airport in the early hours and we were happy to accommodate it.”
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