This must be some kind of a record for the longest time spent in a holding pattern, or something…
In this post:
Garuda Indonesia plane circles endlessly over India
On May 8, 2026, Garuda Indonesia flight GA4208 was operating from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (JED), to Medan, Indonesia (KNO). The flight was operated by an Airbus A330-900neo with the registration code PK-GHI. At 4,190 miles and with a tailwind, this flight ordinarily takes somewhere around 8hr.
However, on this particular day, the journey instead took a staggering 12hr39min. When you zoom out and look at the route the plane operated, you might not think much of it, as it looks pretty normal.
However, when you zoom in on the route over India, you’ll notice something pretty wild. The first 5hr20min of the flight was pretty routine, as the plane made its way across Saudi Arabia, Oman, and the Arabian Sea.
Then while over the southern part of India, the plane entered a holding pattern. It’s not unusual for planes to have to enter holding patterns due to heavy traffic, but the plane stayed in that holding pattern for around 4hr30min.
My goodness, this must’ve been borderline disorienting, with the plane making right patterns for hours on end. Eventually the plane was given permission to continue, and then it was roughly another 2hr50min to complete the journey to Indonesia.
What was the cause of this wild holding pattern?
Like I said, while it’s not uncommon for planes to enter holding patterns for some amount of time, a hold of this length is virtually unheard of. That’s true for the simple reason that planes don’t ordinarily load up several extra hours of fuel, given how costly that is.
So, what was the reason? It was reportedly because a large portion of the airspace around the Bay of Bengal was closed down for the test of the Agni-6 missile.
Fair enough, it’s not uncommon to see airspace closed for missile launches, or other similar activity. Here’s what does surprise me:
- Did the pilots know in advance they’d have to enter a holding pattern, so they loaded up on an extra five or so hours of fuel? That can’t be cheap with as expensive as jet fuel is right now! Or did they just happen to be tankering, given that jet fuel is presumably cheaper in Saudi Arabia than Indonesia?
- If they knew they were going to have to hold, wouldn’t it have been better to just delay the departure?
My guess is that there was some sort of a window for the airspace closure, and perhaps the closure came toward the earlier part of the window? Maybe Garuda Indonesia’s operations folks were hoping for a best case scenario outcome with beating the airspace closure, but was were prepared for the worst case scenario, of having to hold for a long time.
It must’ve been a pretty big chunk of airspace closed, or else you’d think they could just reroute more efficiently, to stay out of the closure zone.
Bottom line
A Garuda Indonesia Airbus A330neo spent hours circling over the Bay of Bengal, after the airspace was closed due to a missile launch. Typically in such a situation flights would just be delayed. And if this was all unexpected, you’d typically see flights divert, since it’s incredibly rare to see aircraft have this much extra fuel.
I imagine this has to be some sort of a record for the longest holding pattern ever on a commercial flight, or something.
What do you make of this Garuda Indonesia holding pattern?
Why couldn't the jet head South over Sri Lanka, then over down to Sumatra, and back up to Medan?
The no fly zone extended 3600 km south, well pass Sri Lanka. These are consistent with the testing of an intercontinental ballistic missile or a hyperglide vehicle, although the Indian defence forces are being tight lipped. This is not an IRBM as someone mentioned earlier.
India issued a NOTAM designating a vast stretch of the Bay of Bengal as a danger zone for a long-range missile test, with the warning active from April 25 to May 6, 2026. It was then extended to May 6-9. The NOTAM covered a corridor extending up to approximately 3,550 km, signaling preparations for an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) launch.
This was likely one of the Haji flights Garuda is currently operating - if you check "live" Garuda flights on Flightradar, you can see that there's a massive amount of widebodies Garuda currently operates from different cities (Makassar, Solo, Padang, etc.) in Indonesia via Medan to Medina & Jeddah. Very fascinating to follow!
Would have been much easier to just land in Chennai and wait out the delay. Somewhere, somehow, communications broke down.
Judging from its flight number, perhaps this is an empty flight after carrying Hajj passenger from CGK to JED then return to CGK to pick another Hajj passenger, must be pretty insane for the crew to been hold for that long despite no passenger inside that flight l.
This isn’t Hajj season yet for this year. Umrah is basically year-round but those flights from JED to CGK get filled up anyway between pilgrims and migrant labor.
For Indonesian with huge amount of people conduct Hajj, we already started Hajj flight to MED or JED since April 22nd, this year GA and SV who assigned for this mammoth task (albeit most of the aircraft were wet-leased from several charter airlines). The first phase started since April 22nd to May 7th sending Hajj pilgrim to MED first, the second phase after May 7th were straight to JED.
It seems to be an extra indeed. Didn’t realize the “Hajj” flights started so early:
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2642634/pakistan
It's already started pretty early for Indonesian since so much people conduct Hajj and it already started since April 22nd. These flights came from CGK/SUB/KJT/BDJ/YIA/SOC/UPG/PLM/PDG/KNO/BTH/BTJ to MED (until 7th May) and JED (start 8th May). These flights usually empty when come back to Indonesia.
Given fuel acquisition problems are more severe in some parts of the world than other parts, airlines have to assess whether to fill up more than usual at their destination than at home. In this case, it worked out for Garuda from an ability to stay in the air longer to avoid India’s missile testing exercise, but it cost Garuda the fuel it brought in to try to somewhat reduce its fuel bill if needing to fill up as much in East Asia.
I guess Garuda crews don't "time out." Probably a stunt by Airbus to show range of the a330neo.
Meanwhile , all were overjoyed to be out of Saudi , and all were saddened to be going to Indonesia .
Wow, your a moron.. must be American
Clearly you haven't traveled
"your" - lol
They smelled the food and were hungry .
Not a ringing endorsement of their flight planning system.
They "planned" it o.k. , but their "execution" was wanting .