In the last few moments, it has emerged that a British Airways Airbus A350 from London Heathrow to Tel Aviv and is returning back to the UK capital following safety concerns.
British Airways Flight To Tel Aviv Returning to London…
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It is understood BA165 is the flight, with spotty ADS-B coverage in Israel showing only a portion of the return as the aircraft is at FL400 over Greece.
British Airways has confirmed that the aircraft will be returning to London Heathrow in a statement:
“Safety is always our highest priority and we’ve taken the decision to return our Tel Aviv flight to Heathrow”.
G-XWBF is the Airbus A350-1000 operating this flight, as per data from RadarBox.
As per data from Planespotters.net, G-XWBF is a 3.5 year old airframe, which was first delivered to British Airways back in May 2020.
British Airways has a fleet of 16 A350-1000 aircraft in the fleet currently, with a couple more units on the way, and are all based at London Heathrow.
Airlines have been cancelling services into Tel Aviv over the last few days amid the ongoing fighting with Hamas.
It is unclear at this stage whether the airline will join the growing list of carriers to cancel services into Israel for the time being.
Airlines such as United, Delta & American have cancelled services, with other European carriers such as Ryanair and Wizz Air following suit.
This remains a developing story. It is understood the aircraft is safe, and will make safe passage back to London Heathrow in the next few hours.
UPDATE #1 @ 1623 UK time – Sky News confirms that British Airways has suspended all flights to Tel Aviv now, amid reports that Hamas attacked the Ben Gurion Airport.
Authorities representing the airport did confirm rockets were flying in the area, but Ben Gurion had not been impacted by this.
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