Passengers Stranded in Turkmenistan for 21 Hours After Diversion

Air France passengers have been delayed by almost two days after they have been diverted to Turkmenistan.

Monday’s Flight 191 was already working 21 hours late when it departed Bengaluru, India, shortly after 11 p.m., in keeping with knowledge from Flightradar24. It was alleged to land in Paris about 10 hours later.

Nevertheless, 4 hours into the journey, the Boeing 777 began descending. It made a U-turn to land in Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan, a sparsely populated nation in Central Asia.

Registered as F-GSPI, the jet is 26 years outdated. The reason for the diversion has not been confirmed, although The Unbiased reported that the aircraft suffered an engine concern.

Passengers then needed to wait almost one other entire day to proceed their journey to Paris. Turkmenistan is dominated by what Human Rights Watch has described as a totalitarian, hereditary authorities and is without doubt one of the world’s most politically secluded nations.

Air France didn’t reply to a request for remark despatched by Enterprise Insider.

On condition that the flight departed from India, there have been a variety of Indian nationals on board, who have been hosted by the nation’s consulate in Turkmenistan. It’s unclear the place nearly all of the passengers on the flight stayed throughout their time in Ashgabat.

In the end, a brand new plane was dispatched to gather the passengers. Flight-tracking knowledge exhibits one other Air France Boeing 777 left Paris on Tuesday morning and arrived in Ashgabat after a five-hour flight.

It spent about three hours on the bottom earlier than departing Turkmenistan shortly after 1 a.m. That is almost 22 hours after the passengers first arrived there.

The aircraft then landed within the French capital at 3:23 a.m. on Wednesday. Together with the departure delay, that is 43 hours later than passengers initially anticipated to get there.

Flight-tracking knowledge seems to point out that the unique aircraft continues to be on the bottom in Ashgabat as of Thursday morning, three days after it landed there.

This wasn’t the primary time that Air France has despatched a aircraft to rescue stranded passengers.

In Could 2024, one in every of its Boeing 787s was flying from Paris to Seattle when a burning scent was detected within the cabin.

The pilots declared an emergency and diverted to Iqaluit, the capital of Canada’s Nunavut territory. A unique flight was canceled so a Boeing 777 may take the passengers to New York.