Airport fire 'may be suspicious'

The fire on the airfield happened on Saturday morning

A fire which caused disruption to flights at Glasgow Airport may have been started deliberately.

Strathclyde Police said they were treating the incident as wilful fire-raising, but were looking into all other lines of inquiry.

Flights were halted following the blaze at 0410 GMT on Saturday.

A window on a 49-seat aircraft operated by bmi was damaged. The plane was not in service at the time and no-one was hurt, police said.

The terminal building remained opened throughout the incident and travellers were advised to check in as normal.

The airfield was re-opened just after 0900 GMT and police and fire officials are continuing their investigations into the cause of the blaze.

The airfield closure caused delays to four international and three domestic flights.

Response times

The incident came only a day after firefighters at the airport decided on indefinite strike action in a row over safety.

The Transport and General Workers' Union said its members would walk out from midday on 29 January over planned changes to firefighting arrangements, which officials claimed would jeopardise safety.

The union said that plans to replace the airport's firefighters with fire safety teams to deal with incidents on the airport's "land side" would increase response times from two to 14 minutes.

A spokesman for BAA said: "Today's incident underlines the importance of having an effective firefighting presence at the airport on the airfield among the aircraft."