- A Lufthansa Airbus A350 flying from Cape Town diverted to Luanda, Angola, after suffering an engine problem on Saturday.
- The passengers were stuck on the plane for hours after landing and their passports were confiscated.
- Some customers left on flights the same day, while others were stuck in the country until Monday.
- For more stories, visit www.BusinessInsider.co.za.
On Saturday, 271 Lufthansa customers were stranded in Luanda, Angola, after their Airbus A350 plane was forced to make an emergency landing, the airline confirmed to Insider on Monday.
The plane was flying from Cape Town to Munich, Germany, when the plane suffered a “technical irregularity in an engine screen” and diverted to the Central African nation, according to Lufthansa.
“The cabin crew decided to shut down one engine to land as a precaution and land in Luanda with priority status,” the airline told Insider. “The aircraft landed safely. Safety on board was not compromised at any time.”
According to data from Flightradar24the plane squawked 7700, which means there is an emergency and the pilots need immediate assistance from air traffic control.
The Aviation Herald, a publication of commercial aircraft accident and incident reports, reported on Monday that the plane was still on the ground in Luanda 20 hours after landing and will need to have its left engine replaced. Lufthansa told Insider that it sent a team of technicians to inspect the plane.
According to the German news channel NTV, the Angolan army confiscated the passengers’ passports in Luanda because they did not have the proper entry documents, and the passengers were stuck on the plane for hours before they were allowed to disembark.
The airline told Insider that the passengers were given a hotel room, where “Lufthansa staff looked after them 24 hours a day.”
He further explained that each client was rebooked within 48 hours. However, NTV reported that some passengers were offered flights for days or even weeks afterward, but Lufthansa told Insider that all passengers will be gone by Monday, three days after the diversion to Luanda.
“The first passengers [left] the remaining passengers fly on Saturday [Monday] with LH561 via Frankfurt to their destinations,” the airline said. LH561 is a regular flight that Lufthansa operates three times a week.
According to Lufthansa, it did not send a rescue flight to recover the passengers. Aviation lawyer Emile Myburgh, who was involved in the repatriation flight between South Africa and Brazil during the pandemic, told Insider that the airline would need permission for a bailout, making it difficult to quickly ship an empty plane, but Angola does not forbid it. .
This is not the first time this year that an airline has landed at less-than-preferred diversion airports. In November, a United Airlines Boeing 787 the flight from London Heathrow to San Francisco was diverted to Iqaluit in the Canadian Arctic due to a mechanical problem.
With the small town lacking the necessary maintenance crews, the airline was forced to cancel a flight from Denver to Frankfurt and divert the empty plane to rescue stranded passengers.
