SINGAPORE- On Monday night (April 22, 2024), around 469 passengers onboard a British Airways (BA) flight from Singapore (SIN) to London Heathrow (LHR) found themselves on a flight to nowhere after the weather radar on the Airbus A380 broke down shortly after takeoff.
The British Airways flight BA12 was scheduled to depart Singapore at 11:20 pm on Monday, but due to a separate technical issue, the bleary-eyed passengers had to sit on the double-deck jet for four hours before the plane eventually departed at 3:10 am.
British Airways A380 Technical Issue
The 10-year-old aircraft then headed north towards Malaysia on what should have been a 13-hour flight to London. However, after climbing to 27,000 feet, the pilots were forced to turn back around and head back to Singapore due to an issue with the weather radar.
Unfortunately for all the passengers onboard, it wasn’t just a matter of returning to Singapore to fix the radar, as the massive quad-jet was fully fueled for the 6,700-mile flight to London.
As a result, the plane had to enter a holding pattern to burn off fuel to reduce the aircraft’s weight to a safe level for a normal landing at Singapore Changi Airport.
Data from Flight Radar 24 shows the aircraft descending to 10,000 feet and circling repeatedly as fuel burned off. Ultimately, the aircraft circled off the coast of Singapore for four hours before eventually landing back where it started.
The flight was canceled, and passengers were transferred to hotels to try again the following day, reported PYOK.
British Airways has faced significant challenges with its fleet of Airbus A380s since their return from extended storage during the pandemic. The A380 (G-XLED) on Monday night was placed into long-term storage in March 2020 and didn’t return to active service for nearly two years until January 2022.
The carrier still considers its A380s an essential part of its fleet, but they are causing numerous problems and are frequently responsible for lengthy delays and cancellations.
In this scenario, it’s not just the passengers on flight 12 who have been affected; the aircraft was also scheduled to operate flight BA269 to Los Angeles on Tuesday. However, that flight has been canceled as no spare aircraft are available.
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Shweta Shukla
Journalist – A graduate in India, Shweta has a passion for aviation and travel. She has an interest in Aviation Journalism and she writes articles for Aviation A2Z for 1+ years.