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- A Qantas flight to South Africa returned to Australia after nine hours.
- The Airbus A380 reportedly had over 400 passengers on board.
- A tech issue prevented it from continuing to fly over large bodies of water, News.com.au reported.
Qantas passengers faced a flight to nowhere after a tech issue appeared to prevent their double-decker jet from continuing its journey.
Tuesday’s Flight 63 took off from Sydney shortly after 10 a.m. and was supposed to arrive in Johannesburg about 14 hours later.
All appeared to be going smoothly until nearly five hours into the journey, when the Airbus A380 turned around over the ocean, per Flightradar24 data.
It headed back to Australia and touched down in Sydney about nine hours after taking off from there.
A spokesperson for Qantas told Australian outlet News.com.au that the “fault was with the satellite communications,” which are necessary for travelling over large bodies of water.
They added that no emergency was declared.
Qantas did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
News.com.au also reported that 410 passengers were on board the enormous jet, all of whom were given accommodation before continuing their journey the following day.
Data from Flightradar24 shows the same A380 operated a flight to Los Angeles on Wednesday.
Returning to where the plane took off can make it easier for an airline to reroute passengers and repair any issues, as Qantas would have more facilities at a hub airport.
However, this route is also one of the more isolated ones, typically involving hours of flying over the southern Indian Ocean, where there are only small islands before reaching Africa.
Passengers could perhaps take some comfort in the fact that other Qantas travelers faced a 15-hour flight to nowhere in June.
The flight from Perth to Paris U-turned over the Indian Ocean after Iran launched an airstrike on Qatar, forcing airspace closures on its route through the Middle East.
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