An unspecified technical problem forced the Rio-bound Boeing aircraft to turn back shortly after takeoff from Amsterdam. A spokesperson for Dutch air traffic control said the plane requested to land as a precaution and turned around over Belgium some 40 minutes after takeoff.
I follow a couple of channels on youtube that post replays of interesting radio communications between pilots and air traffic control. There are technical issues that cause departing flights to return to the airport virtually every single day. Electronics, landing gear stuck down or stuck up, engine stall, engine fire, flaps jam, a sensor says something unexpected. Every brand of airplane imaginable. Pilots are trained to navigate every possible failure mode a plane can encounter. Getting permission to carry commercial passengers requires an incredible level of training and testing. Commercial planes are rigorously engineered.
I’m not trying to carry water for Boeing, but this article describes a relatively common operation (as far as I can tell).
According to FlightStats and FlightRadar24, the original plane was a Boeing 777-206 from 2003, which has been replaced by a 777-300 from 2023. It’s en route now over the Atlantic.
So an issue caused by Boeing’s recent series of quality problems seems unlikely, unless there was a dodgy spare part involved.
As @leetnewb says, nothing out of the extraordinary here. I think the issue is that it’s Boeing. It seems quite fashionable to find fault with them lately. Sometimes justifiably so. Maybe not in this case though unless we see multiple instances of the same model and fault.
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A Boeing 777 aircraft, intended to reach Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, turned around and landed back in Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport shortly after takeoff on Sunday, reporting an unspecified technical issue.
A spokesperson for Dutch air traffic control said the plane requested to land as a precaution and turned around over Belgium some 40 minutes after takeoff.
The incident comes at a time when the US aviation giant Boeing is experiencing a series of safety issues, with its CEO Dave Calhoun announcing he will step down by the end of the year.
Boeing has since faced heavy scrutiny from US regulators, and authorities curbed production while the company attempts to fix safety and quality issues.
Last month, a Singapore-bound Boeing 777-300ER carrying 211 passengers from London hit sudden turbulence over the Irrawaddy basin, forcing the pilot to divert the flight to Bangkok.
In March, a Boeing former employee who had recently been giving evidence against the company in a whistleblower suit died of what police later said was a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
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