Passengers flying from the Bahamas to London took around 11 hours longer than expected to reach their destination after being diverted not once but twice along the way.
British Airways flight BA252 departed from Grand Cayman Island at 6.21pm EST on Tuesday 8 April for its usual one-hour leg to the Bahamian capital, Nassau, which then took off again for the longer eight-hour leg to London.
The flight was going as planned flying over the Atlantic Ocean when it ended up being diverted to Gander International Airport in Newfoundland, Canada, after a passenger experienced a medical issue.
After a five-hour journey, the flight landed in Gander, however, the time now was running short on the legally permitted number of hours the crew could operate the flight.
A decision was then made for the Boeing 777 to land at Keflavik International Airport in Iceland so that a new crew could operate the aircraft to London safely.
After just under a three-hour flight from Gander to Reykjavik, passengers then finally completed their journey with a two hours and 20 minutes flight to the UK capital, landing in London at 10.38pm BST on 9 April, data from FlightRadar24 shows.
The journey from Nassau to London took 11 hours more than expected due to both diversions, after leaving the Bahamas at 10.24pm EDT (3.24am BST) on 8 April and landing in London 19 hours later.
For those journeying all the way from Grand Cayman to London, their flight time would have stretched even longer, having departed at 6.21pm EST (12.21am BST), meaning the total journey would have been around 22 hours.
Simon Calder, travel correspondent of The Independent, said: “Clearly pilots will always make the optimum choice for the health of the passengers. But this can trigger difficult consequences for the remaining passengers and crew – as well as tens of thousands of pounds in costs for the airline.
“The decision to deploy a new crew to Iceland was evidently chosen by British Airways as the least-bad option. I presume other possibilities, such as staying on the ground at Gander and resting the crew there, were also considered but dismissed.
“Anecdotally, medical diversions are happening more frequently – which is what one would expect as the flying population skews older.
“Travellers who want to minimise the risk of being on a plane that has a medical diversion should opt for the lowest-capacity aircraft, such as the JetBlue narrow-bodied jets between the US and UK.
“Bluntly: the fewer fellow passengers on the aircraft, the lower the chances of one of them falling seriously ill.”
The Independent has contacted British Airways for comment.
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