An Air France flight had to make an emergency landing over the weekend after heat in the cabin became too unbearable for passengers.
The flight, an Air France Boeing 777-300 had taken off from Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport on Friday and was heading to Réunion, a French island in the Indian Ocean. According to Paddle Your Own Kanoo, the plane was in the air less than an hour when the problem occurred.
Aviation Herald reported that the flight was within 50 nautical miles of Zurich, Switzerland when the crew “declared PAN PAN reporting heat in the cabin and requested to return to Paris Charles de Gaulle.”
“Pan-pan” is used to convey a situation that is an emergency, but not life-threatening or of the utmost severity, which would require a “Mayday” call.
“On an airliner, it could be the loss of an aircraft system that does not immediately impact the flight but might require rerouting or landing at a nearby airport,” said Simple Flying. “Think of pan-pan as serious but not life-threatening – situations the flight crew can handle with time to troubleshoot, assisted with priority from air traffic control.”
However, the aircraft eventually had to upgrade to “Mayday” when it requested to dump fuel in order to lower weight for the return to France.
“At that point, air traffic control advised the pilots they would only be allowed to dump fuel over France if they upgraded their distress call to a ‘Mayday’, which signifies a life-threatening emergency,” said Paddle Your Own Kanoo.
There were reportedly 312 passengers and 14 crew members aboard the plane.
Thankfully, the situation was handled safely
The plane was able to land safely back at Charles de Gaulle approximately 100 minutes after its initial departure. Eventually, a replacement aircraft came and took the passengers on their 11-hour journey to Réunion.
Aviation Herald said the official delay between the group’s scheduled arrival time and actual arrival was just over six hours.
Meanwhile, the original aircraft reportedly remained on the ground as of Saturday night.
