Unplanned 8-hour ‘flight to nowhere’ leaves passengers stuck where they first started
It was a round-trip flight.
Passengers endured an uncomfortable, 8-hour flight to nowhere when their plane was forced to turn around and return home before they arrived at their destination.
This frustrating flight occurred Saturday aboard a Eurowings flight — a notoriously cramped budget airline with razor-thin, non-reclining seats and narrow toilets — on what was supposed to be a 3-hour Eurohop from Düsseldorf, Germany to Tromsø, Norway, travel site paddleyourownkanoo.com reported.
Flight EW9250 had taken off on time at around 3 p.m. and was approaching their destination when the Tromsø airport reported winds of around 54 miles per hour — which exceeded the threshold deemed safe for the Airbus to land, German outlet Bild reported.
With the plane only several miles from the airport, the pilots were forced to divert to Rovaniemi in nearby Finland.
The plane landed in Rovaniemi, before the 120 passengers sat aboard the cramped aircraft waiting for the weather to clear so they could attempt a second arrival in their intended destination of Tromsø.
After an hour, pilots received confirmation that the winds had died down in Tromsø, so the aircraft took to the skies again.
Unfortunately, however, the second attempt to arrive in Tromsø failed after the wind speed picked up yet again during the aircraft’s approach into the city.
Ultimately, “the pilots decided to fly back to the base in Düsseldorf.”
They touched down at around 11 p.m. — nearly eight hours after initially departing the same city.
Eurowings provided overnight accommodations for the unlucky passengers, before attempting the flight the following morning.
That flight was successful, with the passengers arriving safely in Tromsø at 11a.m. Sunday — 20 hours behind schedule, Bild reported.
However, Flight EW9250 wasn’t the only trip that was waylaid by the wind over the weekend.
A whopping 13 landings in Tromsø were canceled on Saturday due to powerful gales.
