One of the aircraft’s engines failed when it was halfway between Bangkok and Amsterdam, forcing a detour.
An engine failure occurred in a KLM-operated Boeing 777-200ER on May 26 around halfway through a journey from Bangkok to Amsterdam. Due to a shutdown, the aircraft was forced to divert to Dubai, where it has been waiting for approximately a day.
incident specifics
According to information from FlightRadar24.com, KLM flight KL876 left Bangkok around 12:10 local time on Friday, May 26. 286 passengers and 12 crew members were on board. An engine issue happened as the Boeing 777-200ER was flying through Iranian territory, causing a stoppage. The jet was roughly 1,000 km (540 NM) northeast of Dubai, according to The Aviation Herald. In order to avoid going to an Iranian facility, the crew chose to reroute to a location in the United Arab Emirates.
In order to go to Dubai International Airport, the PH-BQL-registered aircraft dipped from FL340 to FL200. After starting the diversion, it arrived there without further issue after around 105 minutes.
The 777-200ER Boeing is still in Dubai.
The 777-200ER, which is about 17 and a half years old, is still in Dubai as of the time of publishing. The airplane should have all the resources needed to be restored to operating condition because the airport is big and because Emirates has its maintenance section there, called “Emirates Engineering.” Of course, how long the jet stays in the UAE will depend on the severity of the problem and the accessibility of particular parts.
Given the extended time on the ground, it is likely that passengers were finally put on several aircraft to Amsterdam. KLM operates a single daily flight to Dubai using a range of Boeing 777 models, including the 777-200ER, 777-300ER, and 787-10. The 787-9 is also used on this route, though less frequently.
Why there wasn’t a detour to a nearby airport
The crews of Air France-KLM 777s have chosen not to fly to the closest acceptable airfield, as we’ve already seen with a number of 777 engine problems. An engine failure over Southwest England on May 9th forced a KLM 777-300ER bound for Sao Paulo to divert to Amsterdam. On January 4, an Air France 777-300ER headed to Los Angeles made a detour back to Paris after experiencing engine trouble above London.
In these circumstances, the airlines carefully considered whether to fly a little further and return their aircraft to “home base” rather than a different airport. Due to this, the crew of the 777 involved in the incident on May 26th decided to land in Dubai rather than Mashhad (MHD), Iran’s second biggest airport, even though it was hours away from Amsterdam.
There are two asphalt runways at the site, the longest of which is 12,877 feet (3,925 meters) long. Why was it decided to do this?
We simply need to look at Norwegian’s 737 diversion event at the end of 2018 to get the answer to this question and understand why an emergency landing in Iran should be avoided, if at all feasible. The 737 MAX had to make a detour to Shiraz in Iran in order to continue its flight from Dubai to Oslo. For two months, the airplane was trapped there.
Iran was subject to US and other Western sanctions, and it still is, which is why the grounding was prolonged. The export of any sensitive technology, including airplane engines, is therefore absolutely prohibited. Further difficulty would have been added by Iranian restrictions on the import of aircraft engines.
The US’s government shutdown while talks on lifting sanctions at the time only made matters worse; given that the US government is currently getting closer to its debt ceiling once more, this very well could have happened again. Short version: Airlines would prefer to avoid the political, administrative, and diplomatic complexities that a detour to Iran can impose.
