A Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737-800F operating a flight to Addis Ababa declared an emergency, forcing a return to Kinshasa, it’s departure point.
Ethiopian Flight Kinshasa-Addis Ababa Declares Emergency…
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Ethiopian flight ET3840 is a scheduled freighter service between Kinshasa and Addis Ababa, and was operated by ET-AVX, one of the airline’s Boeing 737-800Fs.
As per data from Planespotters.net, ET-AVX is a 24.6 year old airframe which started out life with Air Berlin in April 1999.
It remained with the German carrier until it was handed over to Turkish carrier Corendon Airlines in April 2010.
From there, it was returned to lessor GECAS in May 2016, and remained with the lessor following conversion into a cargo aircraft, and was then delivered to Ethiopian Airlines in March 2019, where it has been since.
The airline has four units of these cargo aircraft at the time of writing.
ET3840 departed Kinshasa at 0516 local time this morning and climbed out towards Addis Ababa where the aircraft made a u-turn and declared an emergency.
Following one hold on its descent, the aircraft was able to land safely at 0543, nearly 30 minutes after departure.
At the time of writing, it is unclear what the cause of the emergency was, but was clearly serious enough to force a return back to Kinshasa and not continue to Addis Ababa.
It is understood that the aircraft departed again at 0800 local time this morning, so it is clearly trying to get to the Ethiopian capital, indicating that whatever the issue was, it’s been fixed.
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