SWISS Airbus A220 Flight From Bucharest Makes Emergency Landing In Austria Due To Smoke In Cabin
Yesterday evening, Swiss International Air Lines flight LX1885 from Bucharest Henri Coandă International (OTP) to the carrier’s hub in Zürich (ZRH) had to make an unplanned Austrian diversion. After the Airbus A220 operating the flight experienced engine issues and its cabin and cockpit were penetrated by smoke, the decision was made to touch down at Graz Airport (GRZ) in the Austrian state of Styria.
What happened?
According to data made available by Flightradar24, SWISS flight LX1885 is a regularly scheduled flight that connects Bucharest with Zürich every evening. On most days, it is scheduled to depart the Romanian capital city at 16:40, with a planned block time of two hours and 40 minutes, giving it an arrival time of 18:20 local time (accounting for the one-hour time difference between Romania and Switzerland).
SWISS deploys both the Airbus
A220-100 and the A220-300 on this European route, with the larger A220-300 having been the variant of choice for yesterday’s rotation. The flight left Bucharest almost an hour behind schedule, at 17:27, but its delay would soon be exacerbated due to an alarming inflight occurrence that included smoke in the cabin. Indeed, a statement published by SWISS confirmed that:
“Flight LX1885, traveling from Bucharest to Zürich, was affected by an incident. The cockpit crew decided to make an emergency landing in Graz and evacuate the aircraft following engine issues and the detection of smoke in both the cabin and the cockpit.”
According to AviationSource News, this evacuation was undertaken using the aircraft’s emergency slides after the plane came to a stop on runway 34 at Graz Airport, where the emergency services met the flight. This initially caused the airport to have to close, due to the aircraft remaining static on the strip, although SWISS has since confirmed that “HB-JCD has been removed from the runway.”
Medical attention required
The statement released by SWISS confirmed that the flight had 79 people onboard, with this figure comprising 74 passengers and five members of crew. With fleet data from aeroLOPA showing that the airline’s Airbus A220-300s have 145 seats onboard in a flexible two-class configuration, this figure represents a flight that was just over half full. The incident had medical implications, with SWISS stating that:
“Twelve passengers received medical attention. One cabin crew member was transported to a hospital in Graz by helicopter, and their condition remains unclear. The other four crew members are also under medical care.”
Photo: SWISS
The airline quickly sprung into action when it came to its response plan for the incident, and sent a special flight to Graz last night. The delegation onboard this short-notice service featured “a care team for passengers and crew, technicians, and a support team for local authorities.” In the meantime, the carrier is “working diligently to determine the cause of the incident” that prompted the diversion.
While the airline was naturally apologetic regarding the inconvenience caused by the diversion, safety always has to come first in aviation. This is a sentiment that appears to have been shared by the flight’s passengers, who SWISS thanked “for their patience during this challenging situation.” Simple Flying has reached out to the airline for further information, and will update this article accordingly.
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Going home
This morning, SWISS is operating its second short-notice special flight relating to the incident. Numbered as LX7385, this service was in the air at the time of writing, “bringing all passengers who wish to travel back to Zürich.” Its arrival into the Swiss hub is set to take place at around 11:00 this morning. The carrier also confirmed that the flight’s passengers were able to be accommodated in hotels in Graz.
Photo: SWISS
As previously mentioned, the aircraft operating Swiss International Air Lines flight LX1885 yesterday evening was an Airbus A220-300 bearing the registration HB-JCD. According to ch-aviation, this seven-year-old twinjet is one of 23 A220-300s currently flying for SWISS (of which two are on lease from airBaltic), and it had racked up 12,590 flight hours across 8,999 cycles when last measured in September.
