Singapore Airlines A350 Diverts To London Twice: A 24+ Hour Journey

All that effort to get to the winter paradise of Houston, TX

In a case like that, I imagine they don't let anyone get off the plane and clear customs in LGW? I'm sure some pax would have liked to do that and then just take the train/drive to their final destination, especially if it's between LGW and MAN.

The MAN-IAH (5th freedom route) finishes on the 1st April, I can’t see SQ continuing the route unless they get plenty of connecting traffic.

This was on odd one, I dont know why it abandoned its holding second time to Manchester. I was watching this one live (I am from Manchester) and the a380 landed before this flight abandoned and a 787 and a 777 landed just after. Someone on the flight was told not enough stand/parking space at Manchester which again doesnt make sense if other widebodys were landing before/after. I assumed it was going back to London if crew were about to time out which if they went back up to manchester again doesnt make sense. Frustrating for those onboard thats for sure.

What happen to the passengers continuing to IAH, are they stuck in 1903?

Ben's point is valid. It would be concerning if the crew did the 2nd diversion after the longer time on the ground and multiple landings.
There's a point after which you simply have to say "it doesn't work" and wait for everyone to get rest including the pax. In this case, ground transportation is available from London to Manchester (if it was operating) and SQ can decide if it is worth flying an empty plane (or with just the SIN-IAH passengers) to IAH.

I’m on the MAN IAH flight and they put us in a hotel. It’s been a long day. The lounges on Jan 5th had a virtual queue of 200 people with all the delays.

This is being crazy for the flight.

I am surprised the crew was able to wait, refuel and go again to MAN after the initial 14.25 hr flight. The flight deck crew was certainly ok as certainly a double crew. But what about the cabin crew?

I’d much rather sit on a plane on the ground for 4 hours than on a bus for 6+ from Gatwick to Manchester, especially in a snowstorm in a country who can’t deal with a couple of snowflakes.

Singapore is currently GMT+8, so a Manchester arrival time of 19:11 would be 03:11 in Singapore. That's 24h 58m, having taken off at 02:13 in Singapore.

London Heathrow isn't served by Singapore Airlines's A350s. Only A380s and B777s.

Same in America.

Depends on the snowflakes, if it's metaphorical or literal.

Meanwhile, In America, the crew times out with the first diversion and walks out to their hotels leaving stranded passengers.

Kudos to the SQ crew for having standards and the willingness to carry on...

While some US airlines have crew hour legalities that are less than FAA maximum duty day limitations. No US crew could have pulled this off and I wonder how Singapore did it. They probably have at least 4 crew members but generally time spent in crew rest while aloft does not permit you to add time to your duty day. Kudos are in order, I guess, but landing in bad weather after nearly 24 hours of duty
time is inherently unsafe.

Would the MAN-IAH passengers be entitled to Uk261 compensation since I remember reading somewhere that an inbound aircraft delay, even if it’s outside of the airline’s control, would entitle the passengers to compensation?

Why do you say SQ handled this as well as possible? Social media has lit up with complaints from passengers about how poorly this was handled and how little information they received. SQ's delay handling since covid has been woeful (like many other things at the airline)

Once airborne crew don't time out until they land at whichever destination it may be. They just still be legal on scheduled/normal operating times prior to takeoff though, even on diversion recovery

Well, if the crew times out there's no other option - if SQ crew timed out, they would have to do the same. Although I would argue that in this case it would be much better for the passengers to be bussed or take a train from London. But as always, hindsight is 20/20 and no one could've known how is this going to play out.

It's on case by case basis since it's not in the regulation itself but rather it's established by case law. It's more likely to apply to the airline's own hubs than outstations. In this case I think SQ has a good case for compensation not being due.

I have the same question

Precisely, thinking about the greater good and accepting overtime pay, rather than timing themselves out at the 1st opportunity, and throwing all passengers under the bus.

I guess a few of us here is used to getting compensation from crew timeout.

SQ serves LHR. They must have swapped crew there for the final LHR-MAN segment.

What are you entitled kiasu singaporean who can’t deal when things go wrong?
What else can they do better? Cancel the flights? Bus them off? Buy train tickets? What is your suggestion?

Shame they didn’t divert to Birmingham 90 miles down the road like Qatar, Etihad and others did.

If they had stopped in LGW, could they not have pulled in some staff based at LHR (assuming some redundancy) and swapped them during one of the refueling stops? You can make it from LHR to LGW in about an hour so that's fine and they might have had time to send a backup crew on a deadhead to LHR for the flight the original crew were meant to staff.