This is strange. A flight from London which only had a short distance left, turned around due to a MINOR engine fault, flew back over water for 9 hrs to get fixed in Heathrow!
What or Who was on that Plane, or Comms?
Some of the comments on this MSN article show people are not buying it!
them endure more than nine hours in the air.
The Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner flew across the Atlantic Ocean and had just crossed the Canadian border when it started backtracking.
It took off from Heathrow Airport at 9.27am on Monday and touched down there at 6.54am on Tuesday after flying 7,779km in nine hours and 27 minutes.
A flight from London to George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston would normally have only taken 30 to 40 minutes more than that.
The airline apparently made the decision to return to the UK due to its technicians and facilities being located there.
A British Airways spokesperson stated: ‘The flight returned to London Heathrow as a precaution due to a minor technical issue. It landed safely and customers disembarked as normal. ‘We’ve apologised to our customers for the disruption to their journey.’
The airline did not elaborate on the issue.
Several news outlets reported that it was related to the engines. The issue was not believed to be serious enough to warrant the plane landing immediately, according to The Independent.
All passengers were rebooked on other flights to Houston and to make connections in their original itineraries. Customers were also put in hotels and informed of how they could claim additional expenses.
The incident happened less than a month after a British Airways plane that departed from Heathrow Airport for Oslo, Norway, made an emergency landing at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol due to the cockpit filling with smoke mid-flight. The Airbus A320 carrying up to 190 people experienced the issue 90 minutes into the flight. Passengers were told that the emergency landing was owed to ‘safety fears’ and were told to deplane form the rear door that was farthest from the cockpit.
If it was serious enough to warrant the issue being fixed by flying back to London then it was serious enough to land immediately. Aircraft safety isn't usually treated so casually.
Also, how the hell did they have enough fuel to head back all the way? That's a lot of extra weight just for 'contingencies'.
You're right, this stinks to high heaven.
The plane hadn't yet reached the halfway point in the flight, so they had more than enough fuel to return. It took them 30-40 minutes less to fly back to London than to continue on to their destination.
We would have to see the numbers to see if this really made sense. Rebooking all those seats may have cost them something, but if they knew they had mostly empty alternative flights anyway, then perhaps it really was cheaper to return than to go forward.
I agree it all sounds strange, but conceivably there are ordinary circumstances where this would be a sound business decision. No way to really be sure if that was the case here or not.
In any case, hell of an inconvenience for the passengers.
Ok, I think I must have misread the post in the first place, for some reason I thought they were almost at their destination.
Thanks for the clarification.
Vaxxed pilot wanting to het to home hospital while co capt flies?
Common sense
7779 km = 4833 miles, Q post 4833 miles, “Nothing is random. Everything has meaning”. https://qalerts.app/?n=4833. The Q post also looks back to missile launch attempt to take out Trump.
Me thinking someone or something was onboard that wasn't supposed to be there.
Can someone eli5 how leaving Monday at 9:30a and landing Tuesday at 7a is 9.5 hrs
If it left at 9:30 pm, the math is correct. Mistype?
They couldn't be cleared to land at any other airport? Seems like a huge risk to fly back over the ocean with all passengers.
Exactly, a minor issue should be able to be fixed at any airport. You don't risk flying back over water for 9 hrs. They were refused permission to land?
A Vaxx-death, most likely. There's been so many lately that I bet the flight crews all over have agreed to a protocol in the event of a 'Sudden Death' to return the body quickly back home to the pilot's base city. Who cares what it costs the airline? The airline is the reason this is happening to their skilled pilots and crew.
If they had landed in the originally planned city and they had a dead pilot, local officials would have to be notified. Then the crew would not be allowed to fly without a co-pilot. It would be a whole thing.
Also, the local city would require the local medical examiner check him out and clear the body for return air transport, the body would have to be placed in a container, loaded and shipped in the cargo hold. This would cause a large and expensive delay for the flight, crew and passengers who would be boarding at the arriving city.
Best to go right back, get everyone off, and then have the medics put his body on a gurney and take it to wherever the pilot's family wants it.
What I'm wondering is, how long can this thing fly on a "tank" of gas?
I thought they generally don't fully fill them but typically enough for the flight plus some. How does it make the return trip w/o refueling...
Its British Airways, the most useless bunch I have ever worked for. The management teams are political appointees, a reward for many years of brown noseing.
They have no experience of aviation but they do know how to run committees and pass the buck.