A British Airways flight landed some 600 miles away from its original destination of Dusseldorf this morning instead, touching down in the Scottish city of Edinburgh. According to the BBC, once the flight landed, passengers were asked to indicate via a show of hands whether they still wanted to go to Dusseldorf – to which all passengers indicated they wanted to. British Airways has said the fault lies with a crew sub-contracted by the company which was given the wrong flight information.

Why did the British Airways flight go the wrong way?

According to British Airways, a sub-contracted crew was used for the flight who had been given the wrong flight information.

They departed for Edinburgh on a 96-seat BAe-146 regional jet operated by German charter firm WDL Aviation on behalf of BA CityFlyer.

The crew was sub-contracted under the firm in an arrangement known as a “wet lease” – in which one airline provides aircraft and crew to another for hours operated, rather than outright buying one.

BA has now released a statement in which they explained they are working to see what happened.

They said: “We are working with WDL Aviation, who operated this flight on behalf of British Airways, to establish why the incorrect flight plan was filed.

“We have apologised to customers for this interruption to their journey and will be contacting them all individually.”

WDL Aviation said customers were eventually flown to the original destination of Dusseldorf.

They continued: “We are working closely with the authorities to investigate how the obviously unfortunate mix-up of flight schedules could occur.”

WDL is owned by Berlin-based logistics firm Zeitfracht Group and is a small German airline which has conducted flights for BA before.

According to Simon Calder, travel correspondent for The Independent, people booking the flight will have known they were flying with a contracted organisation.

WDL has not yet released a statement on the situation.

Their website states: “Come to us to benefit from our long experience, highest of safety standards and complete reliability.

“Our more than 100 employees are a highly-qualified team that guarantees the professionality of our air operations every hour of the day.”

Simon Calder says the main cause of the miscommunication between WDL and BA is because someone sent the wrong flight plan via email.

However as the two services don’t use the same IT systems, this mistake was overlooked.

Source: Read Full Article