This 13-hour flight to nowhere!?

Did you know that a few days ago, on January 27, an Emirates Airbus A380 flew thirteen hours, and then landed at its departure airport again? Flight EK-448 from Dubai to Auckland in New Zealand was en route for some six hours, when the pilots were instructed to turn the plane around to fly back again.

But why, do you ask? Well, the reason is pretty simple, yet sad: the airport of Auckland was hit by severe flooding, shutting down the entire airport. There was a large amount of water inside the terminal building and the single runway was also closed because there was severe flooding.

Instead of diverting the huge Airbus A380 to another airport, let’s say Christchurch in New Zealand of maybe even Sydney in Australia, it was decided to bring back all the passengers and crew. This probably saved the airline a lot of additional troubles to organize everything for the passengers at an odd location. The same plane – with registration A6-EVL – departed again the next day and arrived without further incident.

#Auckland #airport #flooding

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▶️ Acknowledgements
Picture of A380 A6-EVL © John Hudson
https://www.planespotters.net/photo/1320962/a6-evl-emirates-airbus-a380-842
Picture of runway flooding
https://twitter.com/fl360aero/status/1619282272989102080
Video of terminal flooding 1
https://twitter.com/oilinki/status/1618974820842242051
Video of terminal flooding 2
https://twitter.com/Flytrippers/status/1620380057771573248

▶️ Tags
Emirates Airbus A380, Emirates flight return, Emirates flight canceled, EK488 return, EK 488 return, Auckland airport flooding, Auckland airport flash flood, mid air flight cancelation