Qantas flight did an epic circle for 8 hours then landed in next city
It was a long flight to nowhere for passengers onboard a Qantas flight on Monday evening.
Flight QF9 from Melbourne to Dubai spent nearly eight hours circling Australian skies on Tuesday morning before returning almost back to where it came from and landing in Sydney.
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The Qantas flight left Melbourne's Tullamarine airport shortly after 11 p.m. local time on Monday evening and arrived in Sydney at 6:45 a.m. "without incident."
A Melbourne to Sydney flight normally takes one hour and 25 minutes. On Tuesday, it took roughly the same amount of time it would take to fly to Singapore's Changi Airport.
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Travelling on the Melbourne to Dubai route should have taken around 13 hours and 20 minutes to complete, but two-and-a-half hours into the flight the captain decided to return the A380 to Sydney, according to a Qantas statement, due to an "engineering issue."
QF9 had reached the eastern parts of Western Australia before turning back. It then circled the towns of Cowra and Goulburn before making its descent into Sydney once the city's curfew had ended at 6 a.m.
A Qantas spokesperson told Mashable Australia the flight had to wait for other aircraft to land during a busy period after Sydney's 6 a.m. curfew lifted, as it was an unscheduled landing. Emergency landings are allowed to break the curfew and take priority over other arrivals, however the flight decided to not request for an emergency landing, the spokesperson said.
The captain chose to land in Sydney due to the availability of another aircraft to take the 410 passengers to Dubai in the morning, according to the statement. A "slight vibration issue" in one of the engines was the cause of the diversion, according to Qantas, and was monitored by crew and operations staff in Sydney.
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Once on the ground in Sydney, passengers were moved onto another A380, which departed for its final destination of Dubai at 9:24 a.m. local time on Tuesday morning.
The incident resulted in an epic 20-plus hour journey for passengers. In good news, at least they will be caught up on the latest blockbusters.
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