Why would a commercial flight make banked turns five minutes before landing / low altitude? As a passenger on a commercial flight into Essaouira From London Luton a short while ago, I noticed the aircraft made several quite steep banked turns, all to left, very close to landing. When I say close I mean about five minutes before we touched the runway, and I'd estimate 600-1500 feet off the ground at most. It was possible to make out individual bushes in detail in the scrub. What was more concerning was that the terrain became undulating and was rising into rounded hills with a height difference of around 250 feet.

Sky was clear, and I don't remember any turbulence near the airport. 

Is it normal to bank that close to the ground? I thought an approach was lined up further out and higher up.
As denizhanedeer said, it was a circling approach. There is only one charted IFR approach to ESU. It comes in from the northwest and would line up for a straight-in approach to runway 16. 



Depending on the wind the pilot may have needed runway 34 (same runway from the opposite end) so they would circle around to line up with it.

This flight did just that. (It might even be your actual flight, Easyjet 2039 on 5/17/2016) It did a short hold at the final approach fix to lose altitude then circled to land on runway 34. It landed at 4:09 UTC. It did the first left turn at 4:06 and 1850 ft. The image here shows it during the second turn at 4:07 and 1475 feet.



The altitudes given are MSL. The terrain rises pretty quickly there. I'm guesstimating from some topo maps that at the area of the turns it rises to 175-200 feet. So 1475 ft MSL would be as low as 1275 ft above ground level.