BA plane lands at wrong airport

BRITISH AIRWAYS FLIGHT ENDS UP IN SCOTLAND INSTEAD OF GERMANY

LONDON – A British Airways flight from London to Düsseldorf ‘accidentally’ landed in Edinburgh last Monday. Passengers on the BAe 146-200 did not notice the error until the crew announced that the landing was being deployed at Edinburgh Airport.

The flight – operated by German leasepartner WDL Aviation – departed from London City Airport and was expected to land in Düsseldorf. Appearantly WDL Aviation duplicated the aircraft’s previous flight to Edinburgh into the next morning, where it should go to Düsseldorf in Germany, the BBC reports. The pilots saw Edinburgh in the flight plan and they simply flew to Edinburgh. BA and WDL are investigating how this could have happened.

“We have apologized to our passengers for this interruption of their journey and will contact each of them,” BA said in a statement. The airline said that safety has never been at stake, because the pilots assumed that Edinburgh was the planned final destination.

Passengers only noticed that the BAe 146-200 had flown north instead of east when the crew announced that the flight was approaching Edinburgh. A concerned passenger asked a flight attendant if they really meant that.

British Airways BAe 146-200
British Airways BAe 146-200. Photo: Aero Icarus [CC BY-SA 2.0

The passengers were shocked to finally realize that they were indeed landing in not only a wrong city, but even a wrong country.

Strangely enough there was no announcement made by the pilot or cabin crew at the start of the flight, that they were leaving for Edinburgh instead of Düsseldorf.

The confusion was complete, at the end of the flight , when the pilot asked the passengers to raise their hands if they wanted to go to Düsseldorf. “Everyone raised their hand,” said a passenger.

At Edinburgh Airport the aircraft then got refueled and it finally departed to Düsseldorf after a short delay.

While there was no danger during this flight, this whole situation was very odd and quite embarrassing to British Airways.

YouTube player
CNN reporting about the very odd, but also funny incident. Video: CNN on YouTube

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(Top image: from CNN video on Youtube)

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