LONDON – An Air France Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, registered as F-HRBA, has been involved in two emergencies in 24 hours resulting in returns to Paris CDG.
F-HRBA was delivered brand new to the French carrier in November 2016, making the aircraft 6.3 years old at the time of writing.
Air France currently has a fleet of 10 Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners at the time of writing, as per data from Planespotters.net.
Emergency #1: Air France 864 – Paris to Cape Town…
The first emergency from F-HRBA happened yesterday whilst it was operating Air France 864 to Cape Town, South Africa.
Around 20-25 minutes into the flight, the aircraft squawked 7700 and proceeded to turn back towards Paris CDG.
It landed back at the Parisian airport not long after the emergency was declared.
The reason for this particular emergency was a technical issue with the aircraft, which resulted in the decision being made not to continue onwards to Cape Town.
Emergency #2 – Air France 268 – Paris to Male…
The second emergency from F-HRBA happened around an hour ago, with the aircraft operating Air France 864 from Paris CDG to Male.
Once again, around 20-25 minutes into the flight, the aircraft turned around and started holding south of Luxembourg to burn off fuel.
AF864 then headed West to join the approach sequence for Runway 08R at Paris CDG before landing safely around 15-20 minutes after its hold near Luxembourg.
At this time, we do not know whether this emergency tonight was the same technical issue that the aircraft experienced yesterday.
AviationSource will reach out to Air France for comment on these two emergencies to see what the official reason was.
This is a developing story.
Technical Issue On The Air France 787 Was Its Engines…
It is understood that the technical issue at hand was to do with one of the Air France Boeing 787’s engines.
AviationSource reader Gary Johnston was on the flight to Cape Town and sent in the photos above that you can see in the slideshow.
It can be expected that the flight to Male more than likely suffered the same issue, although we are still awaiting confirmation from Air France on this.
