A British Airways flight bound for Chicago made an emergency return to London after a rapid descent forced oxygen masks to deploy over Ireland.
The Boeing 777, operating as Flight BA295, had climbed out of Heathrow Airport last Friday at 12:15 p.m. Local time when an unspecified technical failure triggered a steep drop of 28,000 feet in roughly seven minutes, according to flight tracking data. The aircraft was over Irish airspace when pilots declared an emergency.
Oxygen masks deployed throughout the cabin and cockpit during the sudden plunge, reports said. The crew then faced a new problem: the wide-body jet carried too much fuel for a safe immediate landing at its takeoff weight.
For the next four hours, passengers remained strapped in their seats while the aircraft traced looping patterns along the Welsh coastline to burn off fuel. FlightAware tracking showed the 777 circling repeatedly before it could approach Heathrow.
“The aircraft landed safely after our highly-trained pilots returned to Heathrow following a technical issue,” British Airways wrote in a statement.
“Customers disembarked the aircraft normally and our teams are working to get their travel plans back on track as quickly as possible,” the airline added.
The incident added to a difficult stretch for UK aviation. Less than a month earlier, thousands of flights were cancelled nationwide when the country’s air traffic control system suffered a technical meltdown on one of the busiest travel days of the summer.
British Airways did not immediately respond to additional questions from The Post.
The Chicago flight’s emergency unfolded rapidly after what began as a routine transatlantic departure. The 777’s altitude collapse over Ireland came without warning to those on board, leaving travelers to grab for masks as the cabin depressurized. The subsequent fuel-burn maneuver stretched a journey meant for O’Hare International into an exhausting same-day round trip to London.