In the last hour or so, a Virgin Australia flight bound for the Gold Coast returned to Melbourne, despite no 7700 emergency squawk transmission.
Incident: Virgin Australia Flight to Gold Coast Returns to Melbourne…
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VA761 is a routine flight carried out by Virgin Australia between Melbourne and Gold Coast, having departed at 2050 local time earlier today.
Over the Wagga Wagga area, VH-YQH, the Boeing 737-800 aircraft operating the flight, turned around and headed back into its origin point.
At this stage, it is unclear what the reason for this return was, with the aircraft not squawking 7700, the emergency broadcast, at any point during this incident.
As per data from Planespotters.net, VH-YQH is a 11.6 year old aircraft, which was first delivered to Virgin Australia back in May 2012, and was involved in the incident in Melbourne.
Upon its financial difficulties, the jet was withdrawn from use in August 2020 and sent back to lessor AerCap, before returning to the airline again back in July 2021.
Virgin Australia has a fleet of 85 aircraft, of which two are parked, and 83 are active. This is broken down into:
- Nine Boeing 737-700s.
- 75 Boeing 737-800s.
- One Boeing 737 MAX 8.
There are multiple unconfirmed reasons being put out at the moment. Some are saying it is to do with damage to the front landing gear in Melbourne, with others saying it is due to runway closures at Gold Coast.
As soon as we have more information on this incident, we will provide further updates below.
For now, this remains a developing story and AviationSource will approach Virgin Australia for a comment on the cause for the return back into Melbourne.
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