Air France Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner Returns To Paris After Hydraulic Failure

On July 26th, 2024, an Air France flight declared an emergency shortly after takeoff from Paris Charles De Gaulle (CDG). The aircraft returned to CDG and landed within two hours of being airborne.

Hydraulic failure

Air France Flight 226 flies nonstop from Paris Charles De Gaulle (CDG) to Indira Gandhi International Airport (DEL) in Delhi, India, using a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner widebody twinjet. According to AIRLIVE, the aircraft operating the flight on Friday was F-HRBJ.

The flight didn’t get off to the best start. It was supposed to depart at 10:05 local time but was delayed by four hours, only taking off at 14:19, as reported by RadarBox.com. The flight took off from CDG’s runway 27L.

The first 24 minutes of the flight were uneventful as the aircraft climbed to an altitude of 35,000 ft. However, the crew quickly noticed an issue with the Boeing 787-9’s hydraulic system. They promptly declared an emergency by squawking 7700 (the emergency squawk code).

After declaring the emergency, the aircraft was cleared to descend to 24,000 ft and hold over Strasbourg, France, close to the German border. The crew presumably requested the holding maneuver to troubleshoot and burn/dump fuel to reach a safe landing weight. The aircraft was in the holding pattern for 27 minutes.

The aircraft departed the hold and returned to CDG at an altitude of 24,000 ft before steadily descending on its approach to the airport. On approaching the airport, the flight was given a normal squawk code. The aircraft landed safely on the runway from which it departed without incident. The entire flight lasted one hour and 54 minutes.

Air France reported that the aircraft underwent hydraulic issues, and the crew decided to make a precautionary landing. Simple Flying has contacted the airline for further comment.

More information

Currently, it is unclear exactly how severe the hydraulic failure was, and what systems were affected by the failure. However, Air France said in a statement to AIRLIVE that the technical issue was with the hydraulic pump of the aircraft and that it did not affect the airworthiness of the aircraft. It also stated that customers were being reroutes as soon as possible.

Photo: Fasttailwind | Shutterstock

According to ch-aviation, the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner is 4.15 years old and was delivered to the airline on July 23rd 2020. The airline placed the order for the aircraft in question all the way back in December 2011. As of April 30th, 2024, the aircraft has accumulated 17,901 flight hours and 2,065 flight cycles.

It is unlikely that the problem is related to Boeing’s poor quality control issues; it is likely related to a run-of-the-mill component failure. As mentioned previously, the landing was precautionary, and no systems were lost.

Jetliners are often built with redundant systems, and many have at least two hydraulic pumps and three separate systems to ensure that the aircraft is still controllable.