Dreamliner Aborts Flight Following ‘Technical Issue’

June 16, 2025

A British Airways flight from London to India had to turn around mid-air when it suffered a ‘flap failure’—just days after the same model was involved in the Air India disaster that killed all but one passenger.

Flight BA35 had departed from London’s Heathrow Airport at 1:15 p.m. Sunday, more than 30 minutes behind schedule, en route to Chennai, India, with 214 passengers on board.

However, shortly after takeoff, the pilots noticed a problem with the aircraft’s wing flaps and decided to turn the plane around. The plane involved was a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner—a long-haul aircraft with a range of over 7,000 nautical miles—the same model as the one involved in last Thursday’s catastrophic Air India crash.

Data from FlightRadar24 shows the aircraft climbed to about 15,000 feet before entering a series of holding patterns, first over southeast England and then over the English Channel, to dump fuel.

Aircraft flaps are panels on the wings that extend during takeoff and landing to provide extra lift at slower speeds. Malfunctions can make landing difficult and require returning to the point of origin if discovered early in flight.

After about an hour of circling in the air, the Dreamliner landed safely back at Heathrow Airport at around 1:50 p.m. A British Airways spokesperson stated: “The aircraft returned to Heathrow as a standard precaution after reports of a technical issue. The flight landed safely with crew and customers disembarking as they normally would, and our teams worked hard to get their journeys back on track as soon as possible.”

The spokesperson added that this was not an emergency landing and that it was fairly common for planes to turn back in the event of in-flight issues, as it makes arranging new aircraft and resuming passenger travel easier.

Hours after the British Airways flight returned to Heathrow, an Air India 787-8 Dreamliner bound for New Delhi was forced to return to Hong Kong with another suspected ‘technical issue’.