Qantas A380 Stranded In Baku, Azerbaijan

And then these poor passengers will be greeted into LHR with Border Force officials on strike with the army backfilling.

And a fair few would have had connecting flights across UK/Ireland/Europe. Arriving into LHR on Xmas day to be met by border strikes and train strikes...

Were the passengeres provided with visa on a short notice so they could leave the airport?

At least there are plenty of very nice hotels in Baku and I suppose they had capacity.

In general, most nationalities can obtain a visa on arrival. But I guess in case of a diversion they don’t even need this.

The best news...no one injured..plane safe.

In a situation like this, you would think that airline alliances might be able to step in and make the rescue effort easier. Surely easier for BA or another Oneworld partner to send a 777 (or 380 if it's BA) to take these passengers on to LHR. Qantas foots the bill but BA does the rescue flight, passengers get away much faster, cheaper costs because it's a much shorter flight. I guess maybe Qantas needed to send the 380 anyway to operate the next day's flight from LHR back to SYD?

With Russian airspace closed by choice to many countries, traffic over Central Asia has skyrocketed. While this flight was not deviating far from where it would have operated even w/o the sanctions, it was a given that there was going to a major diversion somewhere in Central Asia.
Would be interesting to hear some passenger accounts. This is clearly a much more challenging diversion than LH's to Turkey

Azerbajian is the only officially racist country in the world. No Armenians may enter - even for those who do not carry Armenian passports. There is no other country in the world like this - not Iran, not North Korea, NO ONE ELSE. I'd be curious to see if there were any passengers with Armenian birth or name onboard.

Technically, a Palestinian US passport holder (or any country, really) cannot enter Israel at TLV...

Qatar would have been an obvious rescuer but they are neither friends with Qantas nor do they have spare aircraft, I imagine! BA would probably be in the same situation of aircraft unavailability. It’s one of the busiest times of the year and between industrial action and weather fronts, it’s been quite a challenging week for aircraft schedules.

And for that reason Heathrow’s curfews have been thrown out of the window. Qantas could push it if they wanted to!

You cannot enter Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran, Libya, Kuwait or Sudan with even an Israeli *STAMP* in your passport. Doesn't matter what country you have a passport from. Many who travel to Israel and one of those other countries have removable pages for their passports or a different passport altogether.

There'd be no trains on Christmas Day or Boxing Day in the UK anyway.

Hi — Israel has not stamped passports for many, many years - at least a decade? So this info is out of date. Never heard of removable pages in a passport tbh.

People throw around 'fake news' at anything, but this is fake news. Total lie.
Nothing 'technical' or not. No such rule or law.
And in fact many arabs of different nationalities (US, EU nations, etc) land an TLV and admitted entry. Some will not be admitted entry due to being deemed a security risk, which makes sense given a 100+ years of Israeli-arab war...

The aircraft has seen better days. Between spar cracks and engine problems it's time to put the 74 back carrying passengers. It's much more reliable.

Decent effort from QF, more than could be said for LH with their recent diversion!

That is astounding news. I must share it with my banker in NYC. He is pure Palestinian but emigrated and works in NYC. He told me he visits family in Israel every other year. I actually asked him how crazy his treatment was and he told me it was usually routine, Sometimes he was searched for dangerous items. Seemingly once he was considered safe they even joked with him. Really lucky he did not know that he was not allowed to enter.

I was on a team who investigated the Swissair 111 crash. Any indication of fire, put it down as fast as you can! You have little time if any. Christmas or pax convenience doesn’t matter. Duh!

I don't think having the spare plane parked in Sydney is sensible. They should have the spare plane parked somewhere somewhat in the middle of where they usually fly. Then this way if a diversion happens then it will not be that long to deal with it. I would be interested to know the details of what they did about this situation. Were the passengers stranded in the airport? Where were they sent for a hotel, etc?

I'd probably station that spare plane in DXB. Good maintenance facilities so you can rotate the spare plane and you can reach a lot more distant destinations that QF serves.
Though the intent of the spare is for a quick hotswap at SYD. Maybe a thought if they wanted a 2nd spare 🙂

QF currently operate the A380 on two routes, SYD-SIN-LHR and SYD-LAX so unless they have two spare aircraft SYD is probably the most efficient option. DXB would perhaps be good if London were the only route. From what I've read, QF put the pax in hotels in Baku.

I rather spend my christmas where i should be at least im alive and safe lets give thanks to the lord Jesus Christ for saving us again and to quantas airways always pray for a safer journey merry christmas to all

I wonder why they didn't divert to Dubai?
As the largest A380 operator in the world and a code share partner of QF. I'm sure Emirates would have helped. In addition, they have 2 flights a day to Sydney

Yep Jesus definitely flew that plane safely to Baku...And he hand built the aircraft as well!
What a guy!

You’d choose to fly nearly 2,000 kms further than Baku with the risk of a fire potentially starting in the cargo hold? Qantas made the right call, not the most operationally expedient call.