Three Hours Late, a Heathrow-Bound Jet Landed at the Wrong Airport

A British Airways flight from Cyprus ended its night at London Gatwick rather than Heathrow, and the reason had less to do with weather than with the clock. Flight BA707 left Larnaca at 9:32 p.m., more than three hours behind its scheduled departure, and touched down at Gatwick at 12:12 a.m. on Tuesday after a journey of roughly four hours.

Flight-tracking data from AirNav Radar, as cited in a British press report, suggests the late departure left too little time to reach Heathrow before the airport’s night restrictions took hold. Heathrow limits scheduled aircraft movements between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. to protect residents who live beneath its flight paths, so a jet that is running late can find the runway effectively closed to it.

The airport’s night quota system caps both the number of movements and the amount of noise they generate. That means a delayed arrival may need to use another airport, with passengers, crew and baggage all following the aircraft to a different part of the London area. Reporting so far does not establish at what point the crew learned that Heathrow could not accept the flight.

For travelers, the practical lesson is about onward plans. If you are booked on a late evening arrival into Heathrow, especially one that is already running behind, it is worth keeping a plan for reaching your final destination from Gatwick. Airlines generally arrange the recovery, but connecting trains, pickups and hotel check-ins are the pieces most likely to get complicated.

Sources: Aviation A2Z