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Unless you're traveling in one of those impossibly deluxe, $10,000+ private first-class suites, an intercontinental flight is a long, hard slog. The cramped seats, the jet lag, the awkward bustle of cabin service carts and tired passengers up and down the aisles... it's worth it when you finally get to where you're going, but it's not an easy trip.
Now imagine going through all the trials and tribulations of a transatlantic flight, only to walk off of the plane back into the very airport you left from! That's what happened to the passengers of a British Airways flight, whose bizarre 9-hour "flight to nowhere" on June 10 has left people across the internet scratching their heads.
Look, accidents and malfunctions happen sometimes, and it's always better to be safe than sorry, especially when you're flying an international flight over the ocean. But the British Airways flight wasn't just a couple hours out from London Heathrow Airport when they turned around. According to @dailymail , the plane was already over Newfoundland, Canada , when they experienced a "minor technical issue." Rather than making an emergency landing at a North American airport, though, they... turned around and flew all the way back over the open ocean again?
Related: Boeing Issues New Safety Alert After Terrifying 787 Dreamliner Incident
One Mile at a Time reported that Flight BA195, a Boeing 787, was just shy of five hours into flight when it crossed the Canadian border, about halfway through its 10hr20min trip from London to Houston . By the time the plane arrived back in London, the flight had taken almost nine hours, and the passengers were literally no further off than when they started. The Independent reported that the passengers were rebooked on new flights to Houston , including any missed connecting flights in the US... so there's that, at least.
Why Pull an Intercontinental U-Turn?
Judging by the approximate point where BA195 turned around over Canada on FlightAware's flight map , it was roughly 1,000 miles out from the international airports in Ottawa, Montreal, and Boston as the crow flies, and within 500 miles of St. John's International Airport in Newfoundland. Of course, that's not taking into account flight paths and other variables, but still- why fly more than 2,000 miles back home over the Atlantic?
Well, One Mile at a Time had a theory about that, although it's probably not going to make disgruntled British Airways passengers any happier. Reportedly, one of the pilots later said that one of their engines was experiencing a surge, something that wouldn't put their current flight at risk but would pose a concern on subsequent trips. OMaaT theorized that it was more advantageous (and probably less costly) for the plane to simply fly back home to Heathrow Airport for repairs due to British Airway's contract with their engine manufacturer Rolls Royce, rather than try to navigate the logistics of having their plane repaired overseas.
Make what you will of that one. I swear, sometimes growing a pair of wings sounds easier than trying to run the gauntlet of commercial air travel these days...
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