On January 18th, an Emirates Boeing 777 flying to the US ended up far short of its destination.
Touching down in Russia,
the aircraft had encountered control problems prompting the diversion.
The twinjet landed in St Petersburg, having changed its requested destination
several times along the way. Let’s take a closer look at what happened…
Emirates flight EK225 is a regularly scheduled
service that originates at Dubai International Airport (DXB).
Its destination is California’s San Francisco International (SFO), on the US West Coast.
According to data from FlightRadar24.com, its scheduled departure time is 08:45.
After this, the flight has roughly 15-hour long journey ahead of it,
as flight EK225 isn’t scheduled to touch down in San Francisco until 12:45 local time.
Emirates has consistently used its Boeing 777s on this route,
a corridor on which it is the only carrier to offer direct service between the two cities.
Unfortunately, January 18th’s iteration of flight EK225
never got anywhere near San Francisco, despite spending more than 10 hours in the air.
Having departed slightly behind schedule, at 09:04 local time,
the aircraft began to fly north over the arctic circle.
However, The Aviation Herald reports that, while flying over Russia’s Barents Sea,
the flight’s crew requested to divert to Murmansk, around 700 NM (1,300 km) away.
The request came after encountering control problems with the 777 operating the flight.
The nature of these problems is unclear, but Simple Flying has
contacted Emirates for clarification. At the time of this video’s production,
no additional information has been provided by the airline.
Having set a course for Murmansk, the crew altered their destination to Ekaterinburg.
Half an hour later, they changed their minds again, aiming for St Petersburg instead.
45 minutes away from the city’s Pulkovo Airport (LED), the pilots declared an emergency,
and the twinjet touched down safely on runway two-eigh-left
at 18:17, after more than 10 hours in the air.
The aircraft involved in this situation, having control problems,
was a Boeing 777-300ER registered as A6-EQD. According to data from ch-aviation.com,
the jet is just under five years old, with Emirates having received it back in June 2017.
As of January 20th, FlightRadar24.com shows that the aircraft has remained on
the ground at St Petersburg. This extended duration on the ground
might indicate the seriousness of the issues with the aircraft.
As for the flight’s passengers, it’s likely but unconfirmed, that Emirates put them onto
other commercial airlines out of St Petersburg to get them to their San Francisco destination.
The airline could have flown the passengers back to Dubai with its regular EK174 service from St
Petersburg- but this additional 6-hour journey would be rather inconvenient for the passengers.
The next day’s Flight Ek225, on January 19th, was canceled.
However, Emirates resumed service on January 20th- instead using an Airbus A380. The use of this much
larger aircraft is a good demonstration of how the quadjet’s extra capacity might
be useful on occasion when two flights’ worth of passengers need to be transported at once.
But what do you make of this recent Emirates’ 777 incident? Have you ever been onboard a flight
that has had to make such a diversion? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments.