Hundreds of passengers were left stuck in Azerbaijan when a medical emergency mid-flight forced their Qantas Airbus A380 to make an urgent landing.
The flight had left London’s Heathrow Airport on Sunday evening bound for Singapore when the incident occurred.
A doctor who was on board told the ABC the pilot had to make a “dramatic 180-degree turn” to land at Heydar Aliyev Airport in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital and largest city.
Dr Hamish Urquhart said a female passenger in her 60s had experienced cardiac arrest. He and two other passengers who were also doctors helped stabilise the woman, with medical personnel waiting to provide assistance on landing.
Qantas issued a statement on Monday apologising to customers for the disruption and saying it was “working to get them on their way to Singapore as soon as possible”.
The passengers were given overnight accommodation, as the flight’s operating crew were at their daily limit.
However, some passengers said the situation at the Baku airport was chaotic and confusing, with poor communication from the airline.
“It took five hours to exit the plane, then three hours to wait for a visa to come through, and finally a two-hour trip to a hotel with frequent stops as the guide called someone, evidently totally unsure where to take us,” one man told the ABC.
The Airbus A380 is the largest passenger aircraft in global aviation, and according to the website Aviation A2Z, Baku one of the few regional airports that has the “complete technical and operational readiness” for such a big aircraft.
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