As many as 335 passengers on a Virgin Atlantic flight from London Heathrow to Mumbai, India, spent an entire day and night sleeping on the floor of a small and remote airport in eastern Turkey after an emergency medical diversion led to a hard landing that damaged the Airbus A350-1000 aircraft.
Virgin Atlantic flight VS358 departed London at around 12 pm on March 2, but less than four hours into what should have been a routine eight-hour flight to India’s financial capital, the pilots were alerted to a passenger suffering a serious medical issue.
The pilots decided to land the four-year-old widebody jet as quickly as possible so that the passenger could be rushed to hospital, and at this point, they were flying over eastern Turkey with limited diversion points.
Flight 358 ended up landing at Diyarbakır Airport, which is a military airbase and small public airport located around 80 miles north of the border with Syria and more than 600 miles southeast of Istanbul.
Once on the ground, however, it soon became apparent that it wouldn’t just be a case of sending the sick passenger off in an ambulance and quickly departing Diyarbakır to continue the journey onto Mumbai.
The aircraft had suffered a hard landing and would require engineers to carry out a careful assessment of the technologically advanced plane before it could be allowed to continue on its journey.
Of course, as a small airport with limited air traffic, Diyarbakır doesn’t have any engineers that can carry out this type of inspection of an A350, so Virgin Atlantic was forced to fly its own engineers out to eastern Turkey.
Getting the engineers to Diyarbakır, however, wouldn’t be a quick task, so the passengers were told they would have to spend the night in Turkey so that the plane could be fixed.
Unfortunately, most of the passengers didn’t have the necessary visas to enter Turkey, so they were forced to spend Wednesday night in the small passenger terminal at Diyarbakır Airport.
By Thursday afternoon, though, a “thorough assessment” of the aircraft was still taking place, and it was unclear whether the plane would be cleared to fly on Thursday to get the passengers to Mumbai.
Having spent an entire day in the airport, the passengers eventually were given a slight reprieve when Virgin Atlantic won exceptional approval from Turkish immigration authorities to move the stranded passengers to local hotels for a second unscheduled night in Diyarbakır.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Virgin Atlantic explained: “The VS358 flight from London Heathrow to Mumbai on 2nd April was canceled due to an urgent medical diversion to Diyarbakır Airport in Turkey, followed by ongoing technical inspections of the aircraft.”
“The safety and security of our customers and crew remain our highest priority, and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused,” the statement continued.
“Subject to receiving the necessary technical approvals, we will continue flight VS1358 to Mumbai from Diyarbakır Airport at 12:00 local time on Friday 4th April.”
If, however, the engineers aren’t able to give the plane the all-clear, then Virgin now plans to put the passengers on coaches to drive them to an alternative airport somewhere else in Turkey.
Of course, Virgin Atlantic doesn’t have any ground support in Diyarbakır but the airline says it is supporting the stranded passengers after sending head office staff from London.
A spokesperson for the airline noted: “Passengers are being provided with overnight hotel accommodation and refreshments in Turkey while we work towards a resolution, and we will keep all customers informed as soon as new updates become available.”
Matt’s take
It’s a simple fact that emergency medical diversions are required from time to time, although in most cases, airlines are generally able to land, get the sick passengers off the aircraft and into the care of medical specialists, and then continue on the journey to their intended destination.
Thankfully, it’s much rarer for aircraft to end up stranded at a remote airport with limited resources, as has happened in this case.
In most cases, medical diversions that turn into extended overnight stays are a result of the aircrew running out of legal hours to work, especially when airlines operate long-haul flights on aircraft that don’t have special crew rest facilities.
When it’s the result of a technical issue with the plane, however, the delay can be much longer because airlines have to scramble to get their own engineers and potentially spare parts out of airports that they don’t normally operate from.
Bad call to land DIY!