Uganda: Turkish Flight Circles Entebbe Skies for Three Hours

26 January 2025
Nile Post (Kampala)
By Jacobs Seaman Odongo

The airline has not revealed the technical problem is cited but in 2023, a bird strike forced another of its flights to go into an emergency holding pattern and land back at Entebbe

A Turkish Airlines flight en route to Istanbul was forced into an emergency landing back at Entebbe International Airport Sunday morning.

The A333 aircraft with 259 people on board landed back after three hours of circling the Entebbe skies to reduce fuel for safe weight landing.

The Uganda Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said the flight TK612, which departed Entebbe International Airport for Istanbul on Sunday, January 26, 2025, at about 7.14am, was unable to proceed to its final destination due to safety precautions.

The A333 aircraft successfully returned and landed at Entebbe International Airport at 10.50am after safely circling the Northern Kampala airspace for over three hours to reduce fuel to the required safe landing weight.

"The precautionary measures taken are standard safety procedures in the aviation industry," CAA said in a statement.

"All the passengers and crew were safely disembarked."

It was not immediately clear what safety precautions caused the flight to enter into an emergency holding pattern but Mr Vianney Luggya, the head of corporate affairs and communication at CAA, said the airline merely cited "technical problems".

The CAA is awaiting the results of the investigation to establish what happened.

An "emergency holding pattern" after takeoff refers to a situation where an aircraft, following a takeoff, is instructed to fly in a specific holding pattern within the airspace.

Essentially, it's a way to safely delay the aircraft while assessing the issue the crew would have reported and determining the best course of action.

But it can also be to allow burning or dumping of fuel to reduce the weight of the plane so the it can land back at the airport of origin.

In January 2023, another Turkish Airlines Airbus 330 was forced into a costly emergency landing following bird strikes at takeoff.

The Flight 606 with 281 persons on board had to circle the skies for nearly two hours before safely landing back at Entebbe.

Read the original article on Nile Post.

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