British Airways flight BA293, originally bound to Washington, made a u-turn back to London Heathrow due to a smoke warning onboard.
Information is limited surrounding this incident, but below is what we know on this so far.
Without further ado, let’s get into it…
British Airways BA293 London Heathrow to Washington…
British Airways flight BA293 is a routine scheduled flight between London Heathrow and Washington Dulles.
Furthermore, it is understood the aircraft involved in the incident was G-XLEH.
As per data from Planespotters.net, G-XLEH is a 10.2 year old Airbus A380 that was delivered to the airline in October 2014.
Furthermore, of the A380 variant, British Airways has 12 of them in their fleet.
Moreover, of that 12, all but one are in active service, with an average fleet age of 10.3 years.
As well as the A380, the airline has the following other aircraft in their mainline fleet:
- 29 Airbus A319s.
- 90 Airbus A320s.
- 26 Airbus A321s.
- 18 Airbus A350s.
- 59 Boeing 777s.
- 39 Boeing 787s.
- 4 Dornier Do 328 JETs.
- 20 Embraer E190s.
British Airways flight BA293 departed London Heathrow at 1812 local time on August 9 and initially tracked West towards Washington Dulles.
Near the coast of Ireland, the aircraft made a u-turn back towards it’s base, being Heathrow.
At no point did the crew onboard declare an emergency via the 7700 squawk code.
After one hour and 35 minutes in the air, British Airways flight BA293, originally bound for Washington Dulles, landed safely back into London Heathrow without further incident.
As per @FlightEmergency on X, it is understood the reason for this was due to a smoke in the cockpit indicator alarm.
Following that incident, the flight was cancelled by the airline.
It is understood passengers either had refunds processed or were booked onto the next available flight.
Aircraft Grounded For Two Days…
Following the incident involving G-XLEH on British Airways flight BA293 London-Washington, the aircraft was grounded for two days.
Data from RadarBox highlights that the aircraft re-entered commercial service on August 10 via the BA11 service to Singapore.
It can be assumed that the issues with the aircraft have been fixed by maintenance teams at Heathrow.
This is the second incident this week involving a British Airways Airbus A380.
On August 6, G-XLEC, another one of the airline’s superjumbos, had to reject it’s takeoff from Heathrow due to a suspected electrical problem.
At the time of writing (10/8/24 @ 1620 UK time), the aircraft is still grounded and hasn’t performed any commercial flights.
As soon as we have anymore information pertinent to the incident involving G-XLEH, then we will update you accordingly.
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