Iberia Airlines: Flight staff divert plane and emergency land after 'one engine shuts down'

An Iberia flight from Geneva to Madrid was forced to divert to Zaragoza, a city in Spain, after declaring an emergency mid-flight. The incident occurred yesterday (Sunday 17 March) with the aircraft raising the 7700 squawk emergency code over the Toulouse area.

According to Aviation Source News, the aircraft initially continued on to Madrid but as Zaragoza is closer, the decision was made by the crew on the Iberia flight to divert there instead. Flight IB3493 departed Geneva at 7.09pm local time last night and landed safely into the Spanish airport at 8.27pm local time.

Flight Emergency posted on X, formerly Twitter, last night at around 9pm saying that the aircraft had diverted as one of the engines had “shut down”. Flight Emergency said: “Diverted to Zaragoza with one engine shut down”.

A user responded to the post on X saying: “Wow. I thought this only happened to Boeing…”. This incident comes amid a string of aircraft failures in the recent weeks. A United Airlines Boeing plane was grounded on Friday 15 March after it was found to be missing a panel when the aircraft touched down in Medford Airport in Oregon.

A Loganair flight from Aberdeen to Bristol was forced to divert and make an emergency landing in Newcastle on Thursday 14 March due to a “technical issue”. The flight was around 40 minutes in before the 7700 squawk transmission was made by the crew.

NationalWorld has contacted Iberia for comment.