A Miami-bound British Airways Airbus A380 jet made an unexpected return to London Heathrow Airport on Thursday evening after an engine shutdown more than 3 hours into the long-haul flight.
Flight BA209 left London at 16:04 GMT, roughly thirty minutes late, and was expected to arrive at Miami International Airport at 21:09 EST. But while cruising near Greenland at 37,000 feet, the aircraft made a U-turn due to an “engine 3 shut down” and began a direct flight back to its origin, according to AirLive.
Known as the world’s largest commercial passenger aircraft, the double decker A380 can carry up to 853 passengers, but British Airways configures it to carry 469 people in various classes of comfort.
The aircraft, registered as G-XLEF, arrived back in London at approximately 22:38 GMT, more than 6 hours after its original departure time. A total of 469 passengers and 26 crew members were on board the flight, according to reports from Aeronews Journal.
Newsweek has contacted British Airways and Airbus for comment via email.
While British Airways has not specified the cause of the incident, this is not the first time that the airline has encountered technical difficulties with an Airbus A380 since it was returned to commercial service following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Last month, an A380 on the same London-Miami service was forced to return to Heathrow after experiencing an oil leak from one of its engines. Reports from AirLive said the jet was just four minutes into its journey when it headed south toward the English Channel to dump fuel.
Head For Points, a business and premium leisure travel site, reported in September that between July 1 and September 18, 2024, 3.94 percent of all British Airways A380 flights were canceled or transferred to another aircraft, according to tracking data obtained from FlightRadar24.
The A380 operates services across eight British Airways routes to Boston, Dallas Fort Worth, Johannesburg; Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco, Singapore and Washington D.C. According to the British Airways website “the wings of the plane are 54 percent larger than the wings of a Boeing 747 aircraft.”
Powered by four Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines, it has a maximum speed of 587 mph and a range of 9,000 miles.
Airbus pulled the plug on the superjumbo in February 2019, after 12 years of service and said its last deliveries of the jet, which cost about $25 billion to develop, would be made in 2021. The decision came after Emirates, the largest A380 customer, cut its order, according to the BBC.
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