Passengers on a British Airways flight from London’s City Airport to Dusseldorf in Germany were met with a surprise Monday morning when their plane touched down — in the Scottish capital, Edinburgh.
The British Airways flight had flown for an hour and 10 minutes in the wrong direction — missed the runway by 850km — and landed in Edinburgh by mistake.
The flight was operated by WDL (Westdeutsche Luftwerbung) and leased out by British Airways.
British Airways said it would be working with the German airline to find out why the wrong flight plan was submitted.
“We have apologised to customers for this interruption to their journey and will be contacting them all individually,” British Airways said in a statement.
On its previous flight, on Sunday, March 24, the plane flew to Edinburgh and back, so it could be possible the pilots repeated the flight plan by mistake.
It is believed the crew were unaware they were following the wrong route until they touched down in the Scottish capital.
The German airline said it was “working closely with the authorities to investigate how the obviously unfortunate mix-up of flight schedules could occur”.
“At no time has the safety of passengers been compromised. We flew the passengers on the flight with number BA3271 to Dusseldorf after the involuntary stopover in Edinburgh.”
It is not clear how many passengers were on-board when the plane took this involuntary detour.
It seems highly unusual that an announcement wasn’t made by the crew — informing passengers of the weather and arrival time for their destination.
Perhaps the passengers might have dismissed an odd initial announcement as a mistake, as they weren’t expecting the pilots to follow through with their flight to Edinburgh.
