A 6000 miles BA flight to nowhere

MuffinsDa

'Minor technical fault' on BA jet triggers 6,000-mile flight to nowhere
Passengers were already halfway through their journey and flying over northern Siberia when the plane turned around and headed back to its starting point

http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/ba-british-airways-flight-heathrow-tokyo-cancelled-technical-fault-a7126406.html
nothing on avherald yet

cowboyBuilder

Strange one, if it were more then halfway there you'd think it would be easier to just continue on and have ATC get them a new plan on the way ?

Water John

I presume it would depend on the proximity of airports to each flight path as to the choice.

MuffinsDa

I think they had no choice but to go back as the path from there on to Tokyo goes over really really remote parts of Russia - for hours, I remember flying that route (as a passenger of course) and it took forever to fly over far east Russia.

As far as I remember the same thing happened to a Virgin Atlantic flight on the same route a couple of years ago.

Mebuntu

"British Airways Boeing 777-336ER G-STBH operating BA7 London Heathrow – Tokyo Haneda was delayed entering Russian airspace due to a flight plan issue and made a loop over Joensuu in Finland. The aircraft then entered Russian airspace and flew for two and a half hours when it turned back close to Sidorovsk due, we understand, to the new flight path being too long to reach Tokyo without refuelling and the failure to find a suitable fuel stop within Russia. The initial plan was to refuel at Helsinki but crew would not then have had sufficient hours to reach Tokyo and so the decision was made to return to London Heathrow".

Source: http://www.thebasource.com/

Shannon757

I thought BA had the best planners in the world? Someone messed up here.

Fred Swanson

This post has been deleted.

billy few mates

Without knowing the original flight plan issue that caused the problem in the first place I would would suggest what subsequently unfolded was probably the best plan given the circumstances.
Divert into an unknown airport with no advance planning or proper information about the place then try to arrange suitable ground handling, fuel supplier, catering etc with no GTAs in place, probably no technical support, emergency accommodation to organise for the pax and crew, possible positioning or rescue flight to retrieve the service, again into an unknown and unsupported airfield, possible knock on to schedule and roster disruption.....or....turn around and head back to base and start again...?

Tenger

Indeed. While seemingly a farcical situation ultimately it resulted in a 24 hour delay to the passenger journey. (assuming a re-run of the flight the next day with new aircraft and new crew?)
This is a lot better than being stranding somewhere in Arctic Russia for 2 days with little to no info and possibly sub-standard (due short notice) accommodation.

In addition due to the 24 hr delay in the arrival of the 7th LHR-HND flight there were no crew in place to operate the HND-LHR return on 8th July, so it was also delayed. So BA had 2 LHR-HND flights on 8th July and 2 HND-LHR flights on 9th July. (Prob more, am just referred to affected BA-07/08 rotation)

Stovepipe

Billy has it right; the devil you know is better than the devil you don't. It just shows how easy it is to ruin a flight and upset the schedule and ruin peoples' days but it's one notch further in the learning curve. Anyone who has spent time in the airline industry will tell you that often, it's a surprise when everything runs smoothly because there are so many factors that could go wrong and the entire airline system is rarely far from smooth and it's all a bit like a swan on a lake; elegance and grace on the surface but frantic pedalling underneath.