Last night, a Virgin Atlantic Airbus A350 operating a flight between London and Orlando declared an emergency and diverted to St. John’s, Canada.
Information has been released regarding this incident.
Below is what we know about this.
Virgin Atlantic VS135 London-Orlando: Emergency in St. John’s…
Virgin Atlantic flight VS135, which declared an emergency and diverted to St. John’s is a routine scheduled flight between London and Orlando.
The aircraft involved in the incident is G-VLIB.
As per data from Planespotters.net, G-VLIB is a 2.2 year old Airbus A350-1000 that was delivered to the airline back in April 2022.
Furthermore, of the A350-1000 variant, Virgin Atlantic has 11 of them in the fleet.
All of them are in active service, and offer an average fleet age of 3.7 years.
As well as the A350-1000, VS also has 10 A330-300s and four A330-900neos in their fleet for long-haul aircraft.
Virgin Atlantic flight VS135 departed London Heathrow at 1551 local time yesterday afternoon and proceeded westbound to Orlando.
Whilst over the Atlantic Ocean, the aircraft declared an emergency via the 7700 squawk code.
With St. John’s the nearest airport for a diversion, the crew deviated in that direction.
The aircraft landed without further incident around 30 minutes after the emergency declaration.
A Medical-Related Incident…
It is understood the cause of the emergency into St. John’s by Virgin Atlantic flight VS135 London-Orlando was due to a medical-related issue.
Upon diversion into the Canadian airport, the aircraft offloaded the affected passenger.
Furthermore, the aircraft then departed once again and continued to the Floridian destination.
Overall, there is no further information regarding the condition of the passenger.
As soon as we have more information, we will update you accordingly.
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