Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

FLIGHT

Norwegian flight carrying 60 plumbers turns back due to broken toilets

A flight was forced to turn back to Oslo Airport because the on-board toilet facilities were out of order - despite the presence of 60 qualified plumbers on board.

Published: 30 January 2018 15:58 CET
Norwegian flight carrying 60 plumbers turns back due to broken toilets
File photo: Heiko Junge / NTB scanpix

Radar images from Norwegian flight DY1156 to Munich show the aircraft changing route and landing back at Oslo.

The flight, which took off from Oslo Airport at 9:34am on Saturday, had been due to land in Munich at 11:45am.

But it turned around near the Swedish border over the Skagerrak sea, flew north and then circled before landing back at Oslo.

Flight mapping website FlightRadar24 tweeted details of the unexpected change in course.

“It is correct that DY1156 from Oslo bound for Munich was forced to turn back to Oslo because a fault was found with the toilets on board. The aircraft circled over Hedmark to burn fuel so that it wasn't too heavy to land,” Fatima Elkadi, communications officer with Norwegian, told Dagbladet on Saturday.

A further twist to the story emerged when the newspaper flushed out information revealing that 85 people from the Norwegian plumbing industry – of which around 60 were plumbers from the Rørkjøp company – were on board the aborted flight.

The sanitation technicians were travelling as part of a work trip, according to the report.

“So many plumbers on an aircraft and it has to turn back due to toilet trouble. That is enough to make you laugh,” Hans Christian Ødegård, a plumber from Ulstein who was on the flight, told Dagbladet.

Rørkjøp CEO Frank Olsen also told the newspaper that the passengers took the situation with good humour.

“We'd have gladly fixed the toilets, but it must unfortunately be done from the outside and we didn't want to take a chance on sending out a plumber at 10,000 metres' altitude,” Olsen said.

The flight was rescheduled for later the same day.

READ ALSO: Radio station streams toilet in Slow TV gag

AIRLINE

Sweden stops flights to Iran over safety concerns

Sweden on Friday stopped direct flights to Iran, citing "unclarity" around the crash of a Ukrainian passenger plane earlier this week where 176 people were killed.

Published: 11 January 2020 12:46 CET
Sweden stops flights to Iran over safety concerns
Photo: AKBAR TAVAKOLI / IRNA / AFP

The Swedish Transport Agency said in a statement on Friday that it decided to temporarily withdraw the traffic permit for Iran Air for flights between Sweden and Iran, citing “unclarity around the accident and safety for civilian air traffic.”

Iran Air is the only airline that flies directly between Sweden and Iran.

“We understand that this could create problems for travellers.

But the passengers' safety is paramount and that's why we have decided to temporarily halt the flights,” Gunnar Ljungberg, head of sea and air traffic at The Swedish Transport Agency, said in a statement.

All 176 people on board died when the Ukrainian International Airlines plane went down near Tehran on Wednesday, shortly after Iran launched missiles at US forces in Iraq over the killing of a top Iranian general.

American, British and Canadian officials say intelligence sources indicate Iran shot down the plane, perhaps unintentionally, but this has been denied by Tehran.

The Swedish foreign ministry on Friday confirmed that 17 of the victims were “domiciled” in Sweden, with seven being citizens and 10 registered residents.

“We demand that the incident is investigated speedily, impartially and transparently,” Swedish foreign minister Ann Linde wrote on Twitter.

While Iran Air's flights to Sweden were halted by a government agency, other airlines have voluntarily decided to halt flights to Iran.

Austrian Airlines announced late Thursday that its flight to Tehran that day was ordered to return to Vienna after a stopover in Sofia.

German group Lufthansa said Friday it was cancelling all flights to and from Tehran until January 20 “due to the unclear security situation for the airspace around Tehran airport”.

SHOW COMMENTS