British Airways Boeing 787-8: Plane heading to city in India returns to Heathrow Airport after 'technical snag' mid-flight
A British Airways Boeing 787-8 flight from London to India had to turn around mid-air when it suffered a 'flap failure'.
The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner was yesterday less than an hour into its journey from Heathrow to Chennai when a pilot suspected a 'technical issue'. The BA35 flight circled for an hour over the strait of Dover to dump fuel before safely landing back on the runway at 1.50pm, according to data on Flightradar24.
It came just hours later an Air India 787-8 Dreamliner bound for New Delhi was forced to return to Hong Kong with another suspected 'technical issue'. It will raise further questions about safety concerns with the Boeing model, especially after the Air India tragedy last week.
BA confirmed to MailOnline the Chennai-bound flight returned to London Heathrow as a 'standard precaution'. A source insisted it was not an emergency landing and it was usual for an aircraft to return to an airport after reporting a technical glitch.
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A BA spokesperson said: “The aircraft returned to Heathrow as a standard precaution after reports of a technical issue. The flight landed safely with crew and customers disembarking as they normally would, and our teams worked hard to get their journeys back on track as soon as possible.”
The Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane bound for London Gatwick Airport crashed in a residential area of Ahmedabad shortly after takeoff on Thursday, killing 241 people on board, the airline said. One British passenger who was thrown from the plane survived.
Black smoke billowed from the site where the plane crashed near the airport in Ahmedabad, a city of more than 5 million and the capital of Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state. Firefighters doused the smoking wreckage of the plane, which would have been fully loaded with fuel shortly after takeoff, and adjacent multistory buildings with water. Charred bodies lay on the ground and parts of the fuselage were scattered around the site.