My advice to a pal, Pete, planning a trip to east Asia, was unequivocal: “Fly on one of the Chinese airlines: cheaper, quicker and less damaging for the environment.”
Twenty-four hours earlier, I had told reader Bill White that China Southern was the optimum carrier for a trip to the most distant big city from the UK, Christchurch in New Zealand. “That’s the one I would take,” I added.
In between, Air China flight 856 from London Heathrow to Beijing had touched down at the northern Siberian city of Nizhnevartovsk. The Boeing 777 is a notable nightly departure from Heathrow: it is the last passenger plane of the day scheduled to take off from the UK’s busiest airport.
In the early hours of Tuesday morning, though, it encountered engine trouble en route to Beijing. At the time the plane was over northern Siberia. This is normal for the flight: the most direct route from London to the Chinese capital involves flying initially northeast over the Baltic to St Petersburg, then continuing in a broad arc over Siberia until the Mongolian border. Almost all the time this works just fine – but when you need to divert to the nearest suitable airport, you wind up in places like Nizhnevartovsk.
As a reported 267 people found to their discomfort, Siberia is not a welcoming environment for a diverted plane. The passengers and crew were kept on board for 11 hours while a replacement jet was dispatched to the Siberian city to take everyone on to Beijing.
Meanwhile, the onboard environment deteriorated as supplies were used up, fatigue kicked in, and the facilities became increasingly unsavoury.
In a “normal” diversion, passengers and crew would, as a minimum, be able to disembark and stay in the transit lounge while fresh supplies and those all-important aircraft cleaners are drafted in. Bangor airport (BGR) in the US state of Maine actually has a marketing pitch urging airlines to choose it for those tricky inflight detours, including for incidents of air rage: “BGR is experienced in minimising the diversion required by in-flight disturbances. We handle the situation securely and effectively and get you back on your way.
“Passenger services will make local arrangements for accommodations if necessary.”
The last time a 777 from Europe to China diverted over Siberia was in 2018. Passengers on the Air France flight from Paris to Shanghai were moved to a hotel. In a foretaste of hotel quarantine to come, they were confined there with guards outside until a replacement plane was ready. In Russia these days, the easiest way to deal with a couple of hundred people is to keep them on the plane until the evacuation aircraft arrives.
The number of British passengers on board is not clear; I estimate a couple of dozen, because Chinese flights from the UK are mainly filled with Chinese people. In the unlikely event that any of the Brits has access to the internet, they may be alarmed to read the latest Foreign Office advice: “If Russian authorities detain you, you could face months or years of imprisonment. Russia has a track record of targeting foreign nationals and holding them in detention as leverage over other countries. FCDO’s ability to assist you in these circumstances is extremely limited.”
The Foreign Office does not warn passengers against flying in Russian airspace, which suggests to me that the government thinks it unlikely officials will extract one or more UK citizens from the aircraft in order to use them as bargaining chips.
Also stored in the memory banks: the persuasion exercised by the Belarus air force to “help” a routine Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius divert to Minsk, in a plot dreamt up by President Lukashenko’s secret police. The aim: to forcibly remove a Belarusian dissident who was known to be on board the Boeing 737.
Yet even if you studiously avoid Chinese airlines and Russian airspace, you need to be alert to the possibility that you might wake in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere. Qantas landed me on the Pacific island of Guam en route to Tokyo because of a fuelling issue. Virgin Atlantic’s Heathrow-Shanghai flight was unable to land due to fog and flew off to Beijing, where we were kept firmly on board. What was supposed to be an 11-hour overnight hop on a Boeing 787 extended to 17 hours (and had the side benefit of confirming that I would be able to stand the nonstop flight on the same make of plane from London to Perth in Western Australia).
Only last year, as Storm Isha raged, an easyJet domestic flight from Edinburgh to Bristol diverted to Paris Charles de Gaulle, where many of the undocumented passengers had to sleep in the terminal. Don’t forget your passport: even a trip from Scotland to England can involve an unexpected excursion to a foreign land, though not as extreme as Siberia.
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