LOS ANGELES- American Airlines (AA) flight from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport (SYD), Australia made a U-turn after receiving a false alarm.
A Fort Worth-based carrier operates two daily flights between Los Angeles and Sydney. The airline deploys Boeing 777 and codeshare with Qantas which serves this transpacific route as QF12 with A380.
American Airlines Sydney Flight U-Turn
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has reported the incident and said they will investigate the incident. They wrote on the Aviation Accidents and Incidents page that,
“American Airlines Flight 73 returned safely to Los Angeles International Airport around 1:50 a.m. local time on Thursday, October 24, after the crew reported a possible pressurization issue. The Boeing 777-300 was headed to Sydney, Australia.”
However, we reached out to American Airlines for official remarks, and they told us,
“The aircraft returned to the airport after the crew received a false indicator light regarding the cargo door. Essentially, it was a false alarm. Our maintenance team inspected the aircraft and cleared it to continue to SYD. The aircraft is now scheduled to depart at 1:00 p.m. local time.”
So it was not a pressurization issue but a false cargo door open alarm.
Now let us establish a flight timeline using FlightRadar24 data. American Airlines AA73 flight took off from Los Angeles at 6:01 AM UTC.
After being airborne for around an hour, the flight received a false cargo door warning, some reports also suggest a cabin door warning due to this FAA reported that it was due to pressurization issues.
The flight crew immediately responded to the warning and descended from 28,000 feet to 7,936 feet in 20 minutes, a normal rate of descent. Simultaneously, the flight made a U-turn and made a heavy landing at LAX at 8:50 AM UTC (1:50 AM local time).
The aircraft involved in the incident is an 11.3-year-old Boeing 777-300ER registered as N725AN.
Problem Continues
At the time of publication of this post, the flight was taxiing for its departure flight to Sydney. However, the flight has not departed and it returned again to the apron area. The aircraft is again attached to its gate at Terminal 4.
We again reached out to an American Airlines spokesperson to find out what is the issue. We will update the post once we will have more information on it.
UPDATE: The flight took off again at around 2 PM local time and will land in Sydney after covering a distance of 12,051 KM and flying for around 14 hours.
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