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FLIGHTS

Air France flight to Paris in emergency landing

A Paris-bound Air France flight from Mumbai was forced to make an emergency landing in the Indian city on Monday after developing an engine problem, the airline and airport said.

Air France flight to Paris in emergency landing
File photo or an Air France airplane.

Shortly after take-off, air traffic control declared an emergency aboard the aircraft which was carrying 213 people, said Vaibhav Tiwari, a spokesman at Mumbai's international airport.

"The pilot noticed some technical glitch in the engine," Tiwari told AFP, adding that the plane turned around and landed safely at the Mumbai airport about half an hour after taking off early on Monday.

He said the passengers of flight AF 217 were put up in a hotel and would take the next scheduled flight by Air France.

An Air France spokesman confirmed that the Airbus A330 had returned to the airport. "The plane turned around after a problem with a malfunctioning engine," the spokesman told AFP.

The airline spokesman did not disclose the nature of the engine problem but said it was "not a particularly unusual incident".

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TECHNOLOGY

Orange bosses summoned to ministry after phone glitch leaves French emergency services uncontactable

The French government on Thursday summoned the head of the Orange telecom operator after a network outage that left people unable to reach emergency services.

Orange bosses summoned to ministry after phone glitch leaves French emergency services uncontactable
Photo: Martin Bureau/AFP

A person in the western Morbihan region suffering from a heart condition was reported dead after failing to put through an emergency call during the outage which lasted for several hours on Wednesday, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said.

While it was not certain that the death was caused directly by long delays in getting through, “what is beyond doubt is that people have told us that they tried calling several times and that they couldn’t get an operator immediately,” he told reporters.

Two people with heart conditions in the overseas territory of La Réunion were also reported dead.

Calling the outage a “serious and unacceptable malfunction”, Darmanin said that Stephane Richard, the CEO of Orange which is France’s biggest telecom company, had been summoned early on Thursday to his ministry “to tell us the current state of play”.

Darmanin reported on Wednesday evening that some emergency call centres “are having difficulty receiving calls due to a technical problem from the operator”.

“Everything is being done to resolve these malfunctions as quickly as possible,” he tweeted.

By Thursday morning the emergency numbers – 17 for police, 15 for ambulance, 18 for firefighters and 112 for all emergencies – were back up and running, although temporary numbers set up overnight were also left in place.

READ ALSO Emergency in France – who to call and what to say

Health Minister Olivier Véran said the breakdown was “obviously due to a maintenance problem” by French telecoms group Orange.

The maintenance carried out “by Orange would have caused fairly random breakdowns, with up to a 30-percent drop in some regions”, Véran told the TF1 channel.

Orange confirmed to AFP that a “technical incident on a router had greatly disrupted VoIP (voice over internet protocol), internet calls in some regions”.

A source close to the case ruled out any kind of “hacking”.

Problems were reported across the country from 6pm, causing havoc for emergency services.

Emergency doctor and head of the Samu-Urgences emergency medical services union François Braun said “people were unable to access the service, calls were not coming through, others were cut off in the middle of a conversation”.

He said that almost all of France’s departments were affected, adding that calls usually peak around 7pm.

“We don’t know what consequences this breakdown will have, it’s too early to say,” he said.

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