On March 25th, a British Airways flight flying from London’s City Airport to Dusseldorf in Germany, landed in Edinburgh by mistake.
The passengers were somewhat surprised when the aircraft landed and the “welcome to Edinburgh” announcement was made.
This mistake happened because of an incorrectly filed flight plan. With this incorrect plan in place, both pilots and cabin crew believed the flight was bound for Edinburgh.
After the crew realised the mistake, the aircraft was refuelled and flown to Dusseldorf, the plane landed in Germany with a delay of more than three and a half hours.
The flight in question was operated by a German leasing company WDL Aviation on behalf of a BA subsidiary airline BA CityFlyer. Data shows that the aircraft in question was a British Aerospace 146-200 with the registration D-AMGL.
WDL Aviation said in a statement:
“We are working closely with the authorities to investigate how the obviously unfortunate mix-up of flight schedules could occur. At no time has the safety of passengers been compromised. We flew the passengers on the flight with number BA3271 to Dusseldorf after the involuntary stopover in Edinburgh.”
BA said that they are working with WDL to find out why the wrong flight plan was filed.
“We have apologised to customers for this interruption to their journey and will be contacting them all individually”
Not a great start to the week —thanks to a mistakenly filed flight plan, a WDL Aviation flight operating for British Airways flew to Edinburgh when it was supposed to go to Düsseldorf. https://t.co/1y1byUZrCm pic.twitter.com/rMlYBSDll5
— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) March 25, 2019
Piotr Pomienski, a student at Imperial College London, told CNN that his girlfriend, Zsófia Szabó, was on the plane that landed in Edinburgh by mistake.
“I saw on Flightradar24 that the flight was flying north instead of south, but I assumed it was a system error of some sort. That is until she wrote to me that they’re in Edinburgh.”
“When we started descending and I saw some taller hills/mountains, I did think that this isn’t how Eastern Netherlands/Western Germany should look like but I assumed we took some small detour,” she said. “Then my colleague sitting across the aisle from me told me to check Google Maps — and it showed us being around Carlisle.”
“When we landed there was a bit of a hilarious moment when the flight attendant asked for a show of hands for the people going to Dusseldorf, which turned out to be everyone”
Feature Image by Mathias Düber