The top 10 worst places for your flight to be diverted to

Canada features frequently in diversion airport tales

The diversion of a Jet2 Glasgow-Tenerife flight to Manchester because the hot water system was not working has focused attention on other odd diversions – and places you do not want to end up.

Goose Bay, Labrador, Canada

The United Airlines flight from New York to Hong Kong was over the coast of Greenland when a medical emergency caused a diversion to this military airstrip in sub-Arctic Canada. After the patient was taken off, the door would not closed. The 250 passengers were obliged to stay onboard the stranded Boeing 777 until a replacement was belatedly flown to rescue them and take them back to their starting point.

Irkutsk, Russia

A “fume event,” whose cause could not be traced, cause the diversion of an Air France Paris-Shanghai flight to the eastern Siberian city of Irkutsk. The 282 passengers onboard the Boeing 777 aircraft were interned in hotels in the city due to the lack of Russian visas.

The first rescue plane sent out from Paris itself “went technical”, and by the time a second was despatched the passengers arrived in the Chinese city 68 hours behind schedule.

Iqaluit, Baffin Island, Canada

Another “fume event” caused a British Airways flight from Heathrow to Calgary to divert to the capital of Baffin Island – formerly known as Frobisher Bay. Because of its location, astride the air routes between Europe and the Pacific coast of North America, Iqaluit is often the diversion airport for large passenger jets.

A new international terminal means re-routed passengers can expect to be allowed off the plane rather than incarcerated on board.

Guam, North Pacific

A delay in departure of the Qantas flight from Brisbane to Tokyo meant that the plane had to use the shorter runway at the Queensland airport to avoid causing noise disturbance. That in turn meant it could not carry enough fuel for the 4,422-mile flight, so to solve the sticky problem it touched down at the US military facility whose airport code is GUM.

Guam is a popular diversion airport for Australia-Japan flights, and far preferable to the former Cold War Pacific base of Midway Atoll, a four-square mile island with barely any facilities, is another diversion airstrip in the world’s biggest ocean.

Shiraz, Iran

On 14 December 2018, a Norwegian Boeing 737 MAX was flying from Dubai to the airline’s home base, Oslo. It was crossing Iran at 32,000 feet. But an oil pressure problem with the left-hand engine caused a diversion to the nearest city, Shiraz. While the 180 passengers were welcomed and accommodated until a rescue flight arrived, the plane is still on the ground because President Trump’s sanctions against Iran do not allow parts to be taken in.

Stephenville, Newfoundland, Canada

The Nato air facility at Gander is a regular refuelling stop for transatlantic planes which are lacking in range – notably the old fleet of Ilyushin-86 jets operated by Aeroflot connecting Moscow and Shannon in Ireland with Havana. But in bad weather, the small airfield of Stephenville steps in. Unfortunately all the meals for the final five hours are 200 miles away in Gander.

Timisoara, Romania

When a Ryanair Boeing 737 from Stansted to Thessaloniki was over North Macedonia, about 125 miles from its destination, fog at the Greek airport triggered a diversion.

The obvious diversion airport was Skopje in North Macedonia, from which overland transport to the intended destination would have been straightforward. But instead the aircraft, with nearly 200 passengers onboard, flew northeast into Bulgarian airspace. It passed close to Sofia, Bulgaria’s capital, but did not land there. The track then switched northwest, back towards Stansted, and eventually the aircraft landed at Timisoara in northwest Romania. The city is close to the Hungarian border and nearly 500 miles – and two international frontiers – from Thessaloniki.

Perth, Western Australia

Technically this was a return-to-base rather than a diversion, but given the nature of the decision it deserves inclusion. Six months after the first UK-Australia nonstop service was launched in March 2018, a Perth-Heathrow flight was about 1,000 miles into its 9,000-mile journey when a man in his 30s started acting aggressively.

The plane could have continued 1,400 miles to Singapore, which would have placed passengers within reach of London via other flights, but instead the captain turned the plane around and headed for base.

Beijing, China

A year before the London-Perth service started, I knew I would be able to bear it in economy after my Virgin Atlantic 12-hour flight from Heathrow to Shanghai ended up taking 17 hours. The plane reached the eastern Chinese city, only to find the airport fogbound, and diverted initially to nearby Nanjing. Unfortunately that airport was already full of other diverted aircraft so the 787 flew onto Beijing. After two hours on the ground the pilots departed for Shanghai, touching down after an extremely long night shift.

Heathrow, UK

Another return to base – and perhaps the most extreme “flight to nowhere”. The routine departure of a British Airways 777 from Heathrow to Tokyo went awry while the plane flew over northern Siberia, about 1,000 miles north of the city of Novosibirsk. The jet headed back to its starting point, arriving an hour after it was due to touch down in Tokyo. The passengers were put up in a hotel after a flight to nowhere of more than 6,000 miles, and made the journey the following day. The cost to BA ran into hundreds of thousands of pounds.