Technical issue forces British Airways flight BA31's return from mid-air

However, passengers had to endure around 11 hours of journey just to come back to London. The service usually takes a little over 12 hours to land in Hong Kong. The flight was eventually canceled, with British Airways commenting, "The flight returned to London Heathrow as a precaution due to a minor technical issue. It landed safely and customers disembarked as normal. We’ve apologised [sic]to our customers for the disruption to their journey."

Coincidentally, the same service the next day was also disrupted mid-flight following a medical emergency onboard. According to data by Flightradar24, the 777 diverted to Budapest, where it eventually took off at 02:01 for Hong Kong.

The aircraft involved in the June 29 incident is an almost 24-year-old Boeing 777-200ER registered as G-YMMI. It was delivered to British Airways in November 2000 and has accumulated more than 100,000 flight hours across 12,609 flight cycles as of April 2024, per ch-aviation. It offers a total of 272 seats, with 184 in economy class, forty in premium economy class and forty-eight in business class.

British Airways has more than fifty active Boeing 777s in its fleet; currently comprising forty Boeing B777-200ERs and fifteen B777-300ERs according data from ch-aviation.com . Its widebody fleet also includes Boeing B787s , Airbus A350 -1000 s & Airbus A380 s .

Long-haul flights can be tiring but deboarding at intended destinations makes them bearable; however some flights must return back home causing longer journeys like recent BA case . In last year alone several incidents similar have happened globally including one Flair Airlines Canadian carrier whose trip ended up taking ten hrs instead original planned time duration three-and-a-half-hours because bad weather conditions diverted plane elsewhere before finally heading back start point again without reaching desired location first place !

Another notable instance occurred during Auckland New Zealand floods June twenty-three wherein Emirates American Airlines both forced revert planes originating cities making extended “flights nowhere” respectively thirteen ten hour durations!

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