The crew of an Airbus A-321 bringing the team back from their European Cup Winners' Cup game against Valerenga in Norway, had to abort its landing just 25 seconds from touchdown at London's Heathrow airport.

Amid gasps from the players among the 95 on board, the charter plane went into a steep climb away and headed for Gatwick airport, as there were no baggage handlers available at Heathrow.

Chelsea chairman Ken Bates said: ``I spoke to the pilot, who was still as white as a ghost when he finally landed at Gatwick.

The pilot told me he had been in continual radio contact with Heathrow from 30 minutes outside the airport, but was then suddenly ordered to abort his landing with just 25 seconds to go.''

``I intend to find out exactly what went wrong to cause this to happen.We are not very happy about it, to say the least,because apart from it being a very worrying moment it meant we had to completely rearrange people's travelling arrangements back to their homes.''