"Horror" BA Flight from SYD

[bambbbam2]

From:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/horror-ba-flight-from-sydney/2006/04/17/1145126034412.html

A British Airways passenger jet was forced to make an emergency landing at an airport in Kazakhstan following a false alarm, officials said on Sunday.

The Boeing 747 had been en route to London from Sydney on Saturday, when a fire warning light activated in the coughpit.
...The airport lacked stairs tall enough to reach the jet, forcing passengers to re-board by stepping onto the roof of an airport vehicle and then onto a stairway (!)

 

[oz_mark]

Not sure I would describe this as 'horror'.

 

[NYCguy]

Sounds like quite an adventure to me!

 

[markis10]

Must be a slow news day, hardly a horror flight after all, wonder how the frequent flyer points pan out though?

 

[NM]

I take my hat off to BA for the way they handled the situation. Although the passengers were significantly delayed, and probably scared at times, and finished their flight on an A320 or 767 aircraft instead of a 744, the BA captain made the right decision with the right execution. And then the company did a great job of getting the passengers to their final destination as quickly as practical.

 

[QF WP]

wonder how the frequent flyer points pan out though

They should receive the original FFP's and credits to their nominated FFP. They may also receive some recompense from BA. Will be interesting to see how is pans out.

Quote from a BA employee at LHR's T4 (quoted from the Flyertalk BA Forum, taken from another flying website):

I worked on from my late shift in Terminal 4 last night and met the BA877 and the BA875. Passengers were all fine, just very tired after a long, arduous journey. We (me and my colleagues) chatted with a lot of passengers who basically were very grateful that the Captain of BA10 executed an emergency descent from 37,000ft within 13 minutes.

Problems were caused in Uralsk (URA) by the airfield having no widebody handling equipment, including a lack of aircraft steps. However, the military personnel at URA took good care of the passengers in a hanger, and our crew ensured that food and drink were available. They even provided a TV to entertain the little kids!

3 aircraft were involved in the rescue mission, 2 x A320's and a B763.

The first A320, BA877 arrived at T4 at 2309 from DME. The second, BA875 was the 767, G-BZHA and arrived at 0149, also from DME. The 3rd aircraft (A320) arrived at 0516 direct from URA as BA9204.

The A320's flew a 'shuttle' mission from URA to DME, to drop-off passengers onto the regularly scheduled (but delayed) BA875.

As we understand, bags and freight are going to be freighted back to the UK and are scheduled to arrive on Monday evening.

Around 25 customer service staff in Terminal 4 volunteered to stay on and help our customers with onward connections, transportation, hotels and so on. It actually all went very smoothly and our customers were quite understanding of the situation. I think they were just basically glad to be back home.

 

[Mal]

I take my hot off to BA for the way they handled the situation. Although the passengers were significantly delayed, and probably scared at times, and finished their flight on an A320 or 767 aircraft instead of a 744, the BA captain made the right decision with the right execution. And then the company did a great job of getting the passengers to their final destination as quickly as practical.

I agree.

In a similar situation, I wonder how other airlines would cope... including my two favourites.