A long-haul Lufthansa flight faced significant delay following a medical emergency onboard that led to not one but two diversions. The incident highlighted the challenges long-duration flights can sometimes face when things don’t work according to plan, and even a slight deviation from the schedule can affect the entire flight.
Long flight
Lufthansa flight LH511 is a daily non-stop scheduled service between Buenos Aires’ Ministro Pistarini International Airport (EZE) and Frankfurt (FRA). The flight has a departure time of 16:45 and takes around 12-13 hours to reach Frankfurt.
On June 27th, the Boeing 747-8 took off from Buenos Aires but had to turn around and divert to Natal Airport in Brazil due to a medical emergency. According to FLightradar24.com, the aircraft turned around from its routine flight path almost five hours into the flight, shortly after it crossed the Equator.
After an unscheduled stop at Natal, the jumbo jet again departed towards Europe but had to cut short its flight further and divert to Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG), as the crew ran out of duty time and the airline had to arrange a crew change. Lufthansa shared a statement that said,
“Lufthansa flight LH511, a daily scheduled flight from Buenos Aires to Frankfurt, was diverted to Natal due to a medical emergency with one of the passengers on board requiring medical attention upon landing. The flight departed from Natal and heads to Frankfurt via Paris for a crew change.”
Previous Lufthansa 747 diversions
Lufthansa has seen some other diversions of its 747 flights in recent months. In August 2022, another one of the airline’s 747-8 flying from Newark to Frankfurt had to divert to Boston due to a ‘technical irregularity.’ As a precautionary measure and in accordance with procedures for a prioritized landing, the flight deck crew declared an air emergency.
In October 2022, a Lufthansa 747 performing a flight between Frankfurt and Bengaluru had to make an unscheduled landing in Turkey due to a medical emergency. The aircraft was stranded at the airport for more than 24 hours before it could depart for its eventual destination.
The nature of the medical emergency was not made public, but reports suggested that it required the flight crew to use oxygen cylinders on the aircraft, and this was the reason cited by Lufthansa for the additional delay.
Tricky situation
Airlines often operate their planes on a packed schedule to monetize them as much as possible within safe and legal limits. Delays or diversions of long-haul flights are particularly tricky as there is always a chance of the crew running out of their flight duty hours beyond which they cannot legally operate an aircraft.
A recent example of this came from India when a London-Delhi Air India flight had to divert to Jaipur due to poor weather. The pilot’s refusal to continue the flight to Delhi came under media and public scrutiny, but Air India explained that the cockpit crew came under the FDTL – Flight Duty Time Limitations – because of which the pilots could not operate the flight.
While a flight delay is never pleasant for the passengers or the crew, airlines have to work under certain rules that dictate that the crew cannot fly an aircraft beyond certain hours for the safety of everyone onboard.
What are your views on this? Please leave a comment below.
Source: CNN Brasil