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- A Delta flight from Nigeria to Atlanta diverted shortly after takeoff.
- One of the on-board ovens caught fire but was contained by the crew.
- Some passengers were rebooked on flights to New York, but others had to wait two days.
A Delta Air Lines plane diverted after an oven caught fire on board, forcing some passengers to wait two days before continuing their journey.
Flight 55 took off from Lagos, Nigeria, shortly after noon last Tuesday, headed for Atlanta.
However, less than 40 minutes after takeoff, the Airbus A330 U-turned while over Ghana.
It descended and landed in Ghana’s capital, Accra, just over an hour after first lifting off.
Michael Achimugu, the director of public affairs at Nigeria’s Civil Aviation Authority, said in an X post that there was a fire in one of the aircraft’s ovens.
The Aviation Herald reported that the fire was quickly contained by the flight attendants.
Achimugu added that the plane couldn’t take off again because the crew had reached their maximum working hours.
Meanwhile, some passengers were rebooked on different flights to try to reach Atlanta as soon as possible.
Achimugu said some of them were able to fly to New York the same evening, and others the following day.
But it wasn’t until Thursday that the A330 departed Accra, landing in Atlanta around 7 p.m.
That was almost precisely 48 hours after the flight was originally scheduled to land at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport
Delta Air Lines did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside US working hours.
A similar incident took place on a KLM flight in 2023. Passengers were left shaken and in tears after smoke came from one of the ovens during the journey from Amsterdam to South Africa.
Cabin crew again managed to extinguish the fire, and the plane turned around and flew back to Amsterdam.
Returning to a flight’s origin airport can make it easier for the airline to find a replacement crew and reroute passengers. But other times, urgency can force them to the nearest airport.
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