BA plane forced to make emergency landing at Heathrow as captain and co-pilot fall ill after smelling ‘foul odour’ in cockpit
- The pair were rushed to hospital after fearing exposure to toxic chemicals
A British Airways plane had to make an emergency landing at Heathrow when the captain and co-pilot fell ill after smelling a ‘foul odor’ in the cockpit.
The captain and first officer of a BA flight were forced to put on oxygen masks on Thursday morning after reporting the smell while 30,000 feet in the air.
After coming into contact with emergency services on the ground, the packed plane was diverted to Heathrow Airport shortly after take-off from Newcastle.
The pair were rushed to hospital after being ‘bent over’ amid fears they may have been exposed to toxic chemicals.
Ambulances and fire brigades rushed to BA’s Crew Report Centre, where the two pilots were initially examined after suffering ‘smoke inhalation’ during the dramatic cockpit incident.
The captain and first officer of a British Airways flight resorted to donning oxygen masks after reporting a ‘foul’ stench while still at 30,000 feet
They then sent them to the hospital for further tests.
One source told The Sun: ‘This was a shocking incident. The immediate concern is of course for the two pilots.
“But also notable is the concern about what might have happened if these two flight crews had been drunk while still at the controls of a crowded aircraft at 80,000 feet. You don’t have to think about it.
“An investigation has been launched into this alarming incident.”
A British Airways spokesperson said: ‘The flight landed safely and passengers disembarked normally after a minor technical problem with the aircraft.’
The pilots behind the wheel of a BA Shuttle 13C landed the Airbus A320 at Heathrow’s Terminal 5 at 9.14am this morning, after taking off from Newcastle at 7.41am.
The flight’s scheduled departure was at 6am – an hour and 41 minutes before it actually took off – while it took too 91 minutes to land, making it an hour and 54 minutes later than the expected arrival.
On October 9, British Airways passengers arriving from Barcelona fell ill when cabin crew donned chemical suits and were ‘detained’ on the plane for almost two ‘traumatic’ hours, despite fears of toxic ‘fumes’ swirling around them.
In June this year, a Boeing 777 flight from New York to London had to be canceled after passengers and crew became alarmed by a pungent odor.
Hundreds of passengers were in their seats on BA Flight 176 as it was dramatically diverted back to JFK.
A BA spokesperson described the incident on BA Flight 176 as a ‘technical issue’.
The Unite union told The Sun that BA was trying to distort the nature of such cases and ‘manipulate’ statistics ‘to downplay how widespread the problem really is in the sector’.
A spokesperson for the London Ambulance Service said: ‘We were called at 10.39am today (October 19) to reports of an incident at Terminal 5 Heathrow Airport, Hounslow.
‘We have sent an ambulance crew, an incident response officer and members of our Hazard Area Response Team (HART) to the scene.
“We treated two patients at the scene for smoke inhalation and transported them to a local hospital.”
British Airways said the plane was met by emergency services on arrival as a precaution, as is ‘standard procedure’.
They added: “The safety of our customers and colleagues remains our top priority.”