You wouldn't think to see two Qantas A380s on the ground, but that's exactly what will happen soon.
A group of Qantas passengers and crew may not be able to celebrate Christmas in the UK.
The flagship flight from Australia to Singapore is called QF1. The Singapore to London portion of the flight was going to be operated by a 13 year old A380.
The flight was supposed to leave at 11:45PM, but ended up leaving an hour later. After climbing up to 34,000 feet, the flight was able to operate as scheduled. The plane flew over a number of countries.
Smoke warnings went off in the cockpit towards the end of the flight. The decision was made to divert out of an abundance of caution since there was no indication of a fire. The decision was made by pilots and the operations team.
The decision to make a 180 degree turn to land there was made after the plane had passed the city. It arrived in the capital of Azerbaijan just under 10 hours after leaving Singapore.
At this point, you had 350+ people in Baku, a destination not normally served by Qantas, with a plane that had to be grounded for a while. What did happen next?
Qantas did not say what they would do next. A 14 year old A380 is being sent to rescue stranded passengers. The plane took off from Australia at 11:30AM on December 24th and will be going nonstop to Azerbaijan.
The plane is just entering Indian airspace at the moment. It has been in the air for almost 11 hours and is still in the air. Just over 36 hours after passengers first arrived in the city, the plane is expected to land in the capital.
According to Qantas, passengers will make it to London on December 25. I don't think it's a good idea to fly the plane to London before the curfews kick in. I think the crew from the original flight that was diverted will operate this flight.
Permission was needed from several different governments to send a rescue flight, which is why it took so long. Engineers from Qantas are going to Baku to figure out what went wrong with the A380 flight.
Qantas has a spare plane that can be used for situations like this. Qantas has a spare even though it has a small fleet of A380s. Those who were scheduled to travel on the return flight from London to Singapore to Australia would be impacted by this diversion.
Between the cost of taking care of passengers during the layover and the cost of flying an A380 empty for 15 hours to rescue these passengers, this diversion can't have been cheap for Qantas.
There were some passengers on the flagship route who were going to have a lot of fun. A fire warning went off in the cargo hold and the Qantas flight had to make an emergency landing. Passengers should make it to London on Christmas morning, roughly 48 hours late, because the airline is sending a rescue aircraft.
No one wants their Christmas plans to be ruined, but I wouldn't mind a couple of nights in Baku.
What do you think about this?
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