Brussels Airlines flight SN359 to Luanda and Kinshasa on 17 October had already initiated its descent towards Luanda Airport when the pilots were advised that the airspace was closed without prior notice due to the arrival of the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The aircraft (Airbus A330-300 registered OO-SFE) thus skipped the Luanda stop and flew directly to its next stop, Kinshasa, where it was kept on a holding pattern for half an hour. Unable to return to Luanda for fuel reasons, the pilots decided then to land in Kinshasa
All the passengers to Luanda had to fly back to Brussels and return the next day to Luanda with a special flight, SN1357, operated by Airbus A330-300 registered OO-SFX. They arrived at their destination on Monday 18 October at 19:35, twenty-five and a half hours after their initial schedule.
The passengers that were stuck in Luanda since the previous day could return to Brussels via Kinshasa (FIH) on the same aircraft, whose flight replaced the regularly scheduled BRU-FIH (SN357) and FIH-BRU (SN358).
Kim Daenen, a spokeswoman for Brussels Airlines, explained to Aviation24.be that “following the closure of Luanda airspace, passengers on flight SN359 on 17 October were unfortunately forced to return to Brussels. Due to the closure of Luanda airport, our flight remained in a holding pattern for about half an hour. The captain then decided to head for Kinshasa, the second destination of this triangular flight, for fuel reasons”
She added: “Our Operations Centre then looked at various options, such as dropping off passengers in Kinshasa, but there are no Kinshasa-Luanda flights. Unfortunately, the only option was to return to Brussels with these passengers.
She concluded: “We are sorry for the great inconvenience this has caused our passengers. Immediately after the decision to return home, we began to re-accommodate passengers on a flight the next day (yesterday). They arrived in Luanda last night.”
Was it not reported in Notams that the airport would be closed to normal commercial traffic dye to a VIP arrival. Personally I think that too much fuss is made of VIP arrivals and that coomercial traffic which pays for the airport in the first place should not be delayed more than a few minutes for the priority landing
I hope that they were at least given full status miles for the distance actually flown 😉
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