In the last 30 minutes, a Volotea flight between Catania and Ancona has turned back to its Italian origin point minutes after departure following an emergency broadcast.
Emergency: Volotea Flight Turns Back to Catania Minutes After Departure…
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EC-NOS was the Airbus A320 operating flight V1702 to Ancona from Catania.
As per data from Planespotters.net, EC-NOS is a 14-year old aircraft, having started out life with Indonesia AirAsia back in September 2009.
It then switched over to the AirAsia X brand in September 2015, and then back again to Indonesia AirAsia in October 2018, where it remained there.
In August 2021, Volotea took delivery of the aircraft type, and has had the aircraft for around two years.
V1702 departed Catania at 1900 local time exactly, and proceeded to turn left after departure.
After completion of the left hand turn, that is when the aircraft squawked 7700, the emergency squawk code used to declare a general emergency.
From there, it then circled around the island of Sicilia, before making an approach and subsequent landing into the airport.
At this stage, it is unclear what the cause of the emergency into Catania was for, but this will no doubt be revealed in the hours ahead.
What we do know is that the emergency is serious enough to cause a return back to the origin point minutes after departure.
AviationSource will approach Volotea for a comment on this incident, and as soon as we have updates, we will update this article accordingly.
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