The political situation in Niger caused two British Airways Airbus A380s to operate very long ”flights to nowhere.” One A380 flew from Johannesburg to Johannesburg in around 10.5 hours, while another A380 flew from London to London in around 8.5 hours. Let’s go over the details of each of these incidents.
Continue reading: Two British Airways A380s U-Turn Over Africa Due To Niger Airspace Closure
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Unless your destination is further than the range of the A330 and then not so good.
Imagine sleeping through the announcement and landing thinking you're at your destination but back at your origin haha
Lufthansa from Johannesburg diverted to Lagos on the same day
And KLM diverted to Barcelona
Haha! My thought exactly. I tend to take a lot of redeyes, and always ingest a heavy dose of sleeping pills as soon as we're airborne, waking up just before landing (feeling a bit confused).
Wow, fortunately I was on the previous night's flight, which had no issues flying over parts of Niger and Libya.
@Leo, BA had no problem filling two A380s, so that would require 3 B777 to replace.
What flight tracker website do you screen grab from?
Having a fuel stop in Lagos cant be much fun, especially given that they are missing a few runway lights.
No other comment seen about air space further west which wouldn't require refuel.
Knowing the very limited facilities at Lagos, I think KLM's decision made most sense: Continue to Spain and refuel there. But I guess BA didn't have enough fuel reserve for that.
Yes, there is. That's what LX did, they flew around Niger over Burkina Faso and Mali (both ways). Apparently, they had enough fuel to do so without an additional stopover. It added a bit more than 1 hour flying time, which inevitably resulted in an arrival delay, but fairly minimal as compared to the diversion back to origin.
This is a one night only issue effectively. Most of these routes can simply file an alternate routing via Luanda/Brazza/Accra/Dakar FIRs all the way up into Algeria and then to Europe. Even the parts of Niamey FIR covering Burkina Faso airspace are available (but there are supposedly new military developments in Ouagadougou today as well, so some airline are choosing to avoid that out of abundance of caution).
I was checking in for my JNB-AUH flight this morning when I saw all the passengers walking together, talking about having to turn around half way to London. I was wondering what could've caused that. Now I know! They all looked a bit frazzled as one would expect. They were all heading toward a shuttle bus, I'm assuming BA was shuttling them to a hotel while they figure out what they were going to do?
Why did the A380 fly around the english channel for 4 hours instead of diverting to Amsterdam or Paris? Surely it would have been more economical instead of burning all that fuel.
Fuel is not the only consideration. As Ben points out, the airline industry is complicated.
Various scenarios. What to do with passengers. Some may not have visas to enter Netherlands. Flight crew hours. Acquiring new crew. Positioning aircraft for next scheduled flight. Airport facilities
Africa is just not a very safe country. Anyone flying there should beware! BA is smart enough to retreat to London.
@Icarus - Why not?
After the UK left the EU, the UK implemented a similar regulation called the Air Passenger Rights Regulations, which closely mirrors the EU 261 regulation. The regulation has remained applicable in the UK since 2020, as if Brexit had never occurred.
https://www.britishairways.com/en-us/information/legal/flight-cancellation-compensation
Be careful not to fly too close to the Sun by answering questions you don't know anything about. You may get burned.
It reminds of my flights from Paris to South Africa in the 80s. Air France did not fly because of the South African regime it was UTA and DC10s did not have long enough legs, so had to make a pit stop in then Zaire in the middle of the night, South African airways did not have over flight rights because of the regime in Pretoria so had to refuel in ilo do Sal (then 747s did not carry enough fuel to fly around the continent ) or one had to fly with BA or Lufthansa. It was complicated then already!
The pilot did the passengers a favor. More than likely no gate available for the double decker a380 and if they would have landed the a/c would be turned off and passengers waiting on the ground for a gate in the heat. Passengers still had to wait but more comfortable in the air.
Note the flight from NBO-LHR also turned around and returned to Nairobi for the same airspace issue. Today, AF has cancelled several days of flights to BKO and OUA supposedly in retaliation of those coup governments supporting the Nigerian coup leaders. There are a lot of effects to the situation in the Sahel
Taking that routing to dakar is a more expensive one.
It will be cheaper routing through Egypt.
We have 54 countries and a huge number of Africans want to join us at the tip. Africa will remain the 'dark' continent for many years to come unfortunately.
But would this be considered to be within BA’s control? I thought that issues outside of the airlines’ control were not payable. Seems like a military coup would not be in the same category as a mechanical or crew issue.
From Johannesburg to London, routing via Dakar FIR versus Cairo FIR is over 500nm shorter. From Cape Town, even more so. Other than a few points in East Africa which would normally be using the Cairo FIR routings anyway, this is almost univerally true for points in Southern Africa to/from Europe given current restrictions in Sudan, Libya and Niger.
Who made africa become an unsafe and unstable place except the western countries who steal it is resources and ensure it is being run to the ground by their puppet regimes
NBO-LHR via Cairo FIR took 8h59m last night 07AUG23, versus 8h49m via Niamey FIR on 05AUG23 which was the last operation on that routing. That is easily dealt with going forward.
We were on that flight and the way BA handled it was despicable. We were told we would get an email from them about new flight details. Heard nothing. Went back to the airport and waited over 2 hrs at a counter we were directed to where ONE staff member was assigned with helping all passengers affected. She eventually told us we would be out on a BA flight the following night. NO email, no booking confirmation. Woke up this morning, logged onto their App and see we had been book on Lufthansa to Frankfurt on Wednesday night. Once again, no email, no phone call, no confirmation. We had other flights booked to travel to Heathrow from Edinburg and then to Dallas and onto Florida. These flights had nothing to do with the turned around flight and they changed all these bookings without our consent. No refunds, no emails and nothing from BA. Despicable service. Very flat they turned around and did not put us in any danger but their handling post the situation is beyond deplorable.
I was one of the passengers, in the flight from London to JHB. It was a mess, and thankfully now we understand what was the problem. However the huge problem was how they handled the passengers; parents with kids, the elderly and disabled passengers. It was not good how they treated us. BA needs serious and better planning for such situations... Itbis safe to say I will never ever fly with BA, because they had this notion that 'Your problem is not my problem but the rules are..." in addition the curfew situation was quite hilarious...
I was on the flight and of course when we were told about landing back at J'berg we were all thankful that we were ok!! But OMG it was utter chaos back in the airport. NO ONE knew anything.
We ended up flying Emirates to Heathrow, via Dubai.
Emirates were amazing - I can honestly say I will never use BA again.
It’s interesting that no-one has
mentioned that we were not all offered alternative flights. We were on the dreaded Jo’burg to Jo’burg flight on Sunday 6th.
Amidst confusion we were shuttled to the Hilton Sandton while BA were going to find us alternative flights. This didn’t happen.
I phoned BA and was told there were no flights back to UK they could offer us!
The next day we received a letter under our hotel door to say BA had cancelled the flight and that we must book a return flight ourselves.
To add insult to injury, we were told to vacate our hotel room by 11am after breakfast as BA were not paying for further accommodation.
At this point I had spent nearly £200 on phone calls.
We had been left stranded by BA.
Before the end of Apartheid in South Africa, Sout African Airways planes from JNB to Europe flew all around the continent over the Atlantic because they weren´t allowed into any airspace of African nations.
Would this strategy now see a reapt option due to the coup in Niger particularly if the situation in the wider region worsens?
I don't have enough data but the preflight briefing should have incorporated the possibility of diversion of flight plan and possibly as soon as the airspace was closed the aircraft should have diverted or returned to origin not after 5 hours plus
I was on a Swiss flight the same day. Left JNB on time, made a left turn in the middle of the night, flew around Niger and landed about 90 minutes late. Pilot said they knew closure was a possibility before leaving JNB so added the fuel. A Lufthansa flight that left 15 minutes earlier had to divert to Lagos (had family on that flight). How did BA not know this might happen and pre-plan accordingly?
This is the most ignorant comment that I've seen on here in a few weeks. 1) Africa is not a country 2) Flying over Ukraine, Russia, or Syria is way more dangerous. Im guessing you're from the US based on the level of intellect.
Indeed,but Abidjan can and in theory Accra. Why Abidjan wasn't used for at least one aircraft is beyond my understanding - even if the flight would be cancelled the airport has excellent facilities and the city is big enough to get enough hotel capacity on short notice. It does get regular AF380.
Accra is also capable of A380 afaik but has no regular traffic. Anyhow it seems like BA was more keen on keeping it operationally easy than on the best solution.