Passengers on a recent transatlantic British Airways flight had a rather eventful journey. The flight made a u-turn over the Atlantic, after one of the pilots became incapacitated.
British Airways 777 diverts to St. John’s Canada
This incident happened on Thursday, March 14, 2024, and involves British Airways flight BA2272 from New York (JFK) to London (LGW). The flight was operated by a 25-year-old Boeing 777-200ER with the registration code G-VIIP.
The flight took off from New York at 9:54PM local time, to start the quick overnight transatlantic crossing. The 777 reached its cruising altitude of 40,000 feet, and the first three hours of the flight were routine, as the plane made its way northeast over the Atlantic.
However, at that point one of the two pilots onboard reportedly became incapacitated. The remaining pilot declared an emergency, and requested to divert to St. John’s, Canada (YYT), which required backtracking around 500 miles.
From the time that the aircraft turned around, it was a roughly 80-minute journey to St. John’s, where the aircraft touched down on runway 29 at around 3:30AM local time, just over four hours after it had departed.
Emergency services were standing by so that the incapacitated pilot could be looked after. I haven’t seen any update as to that pilot’s condition, but hopefully s/he is okay. Also, kudos to the pilot flying for handling a stressful situation with ease, as I have to imagine that wasn’t a fun experience.
Below you can hear part of the air traffic control audio of the diversion.
British Airways’ impressive rescue effort
Often when you have a medical emergency, you can just drop a passenger off, and then continue the journey to the intended destination. Of course it’s a different story when the person with the medical emergency is one of the people flying the plane.
Landing in St. John’s in the middle of the night (a station not ordinarily served by British Airways) with hundreds of people is a logistical nightmare. So with that in mind, I have to give British Airways credit for a very impressive effort to minimize the inconvenience for passengers.
How did British Airways handle this situation? British Airways has a daytime flight from Newark (EWR) to London (LHR), BA180, scheduled to depart at 8:55AM. On March 15, 2024, British Airways decided to cancel that flight, and instead flew the aircraft to St. John’s to pick up stranded passengers.
A 23-year-old Boeing 777-200ER with the registration code G-YMMJ flew from Newark to St. John’s with the flight number BA9156, in a flight time of 2hr15min. It landed there at 1:07PM local time. Then it loaded up passengers, and at 4:18PM the plane took off for London Heathrow, where it landed at 11:10PM on Friday, March 15, 2024, after a flight time of 4hr21min.
All things considered, I’d say that’s about as efficiently as you could rescue passengers in a situation like this, so credit goes to British Airways’ operations team for that.
So, what happened to the original 777? That first 777 ended up staying on the ground in St. John’s for a total of just under 36 hours. The plane was then ferried back to London Gatwick empty, as flight BA9608. That flight took 4hr18min, and landed in London just before 10PM on Saturday, March 16, 2024.
Bottom line
A British Airways Boeing 777 flying from New York to London had a very complicated transatlantic flight, after a pilot became incapacitated. The aircraft diverted to St. John’s, where the pilot received medical attention, and hopefully s/he is okay.
I’m impressed by how quickly British Airways managed to pick up stranded passengers — the airline canceled a Newark to London flight so that the aircraft could instead return to London via St. John’s, picking up stranded passengers.
What do you make of this British Airways diversion?
