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Qantas passengers stranded in Azerbaijan following a medical diversion yesterday are expected to continue to Sydney via Singapore today after an unexpected overnight stop.
Flight QF2, operated by A380 VH-OQB, was forced to land at Baku’s Heydar Aliyev International Airport at around 7:55am local time after a female passenger in her 60s suffered a “life-threatening cardiac event” en route from London, as reported by the ABC.
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The onward flight from Baku to Singapore is expected to take off at around 8:50am local time today, according to FlightRadar24.
“Our QF2 London to Singapore service diverted to Baku in Azerbaijan yesterday due to a medical incident onboard,” a Qantas spokesperson said this morning.
“We apologise to customers for the disruption and are working to get them on their way to Singapore as soon as possible.”
Passengers were provided with overnight accommodation as the diversion caused crew to reach their duty limit for the day, with an A380 engineer also required to fly out from London to perform a routine maintenance check that had been scheduled to be performed in Singapore.
Baku was the closest airport with a runway capable of hosting aircraft the size of an A380, which requires at least 3km to land; Heydar Aliyev International Airport has two runways that can handle the A380, measuring 3.2km and 4km respectively.
Dr Hamish Urquhart, an Australian who helped stabilise the passenger along with fellow doctors Stephen Torbin and Tanya Trinh, told the ABC that the aircraft had to make a “dramatic 180-degree turn” to reach Baku.
“The lady was really quite unwell and needed intravenous access while we were trying to land, which was a bit challenging,” he said.
“In the air it was a bit stressful as we were flying towards Afghanistan.”
This is not the first time in recent years that a Qantas A380 has been forced to land in Baku, with VH-OQH diverting days before Christmas in December 2022 due to what was believed to be a faulty sensor detecting smoke in the cargo hold, prompting the Flying Kangaroo to send sister A380 VH-OQD to rescue the passengers and see them safely to London.
