British Airways A380 abandons flight after six hours

A British Airways Airbus A380 has been forced to return to London after suffering a technical fault on a flight to Miami. Passengers onboard the affected flight spent six hours in the air before the plane landed back where it had first embarked from earlier in the day.  

The flight concerned was British Airways flight BA209 from London-Heathrow Airport (LHR) to Miami International Airport (MIA) on Thursday, December 5, 2024. The flight was being operated by one of the carrier’s 12-strong fleet of Airbus A380s, registered as G-XLEF. The flight is one of two run daily by the airline between its main base at Heathrow and the Floridian city. 

Flight BA209 departed from Heathrow at 16:39 GMT, already almost an hour after its scheduled departure time of 15:30 GMT. Data analyzed from Flightradar shows that the aircraft headed north over England and Scotland before coasting out over the Outer Hebrides and the North Atlantic. At this point, the aircraft had already reached its initial cruising altitude of 37,000ft (11,280m). It then continued westwards, passing to the south of Iceland and heading to the southernmost tip of Greenland. 

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