Sky drama as flight is forced to reroute

BRITISH holidaymakers headed to Australia endured a marathon flight when their plane was forced to urgently reroute.

The Sydney-bound Qantas flight QF2 from Dubai was forced to descend 29,000 feet in just five minutes because of a fault in its cabin air system, the airline said.

The plane’s captain requested a “priority landing” at Perth airport, on Australia’s west coast, landing after 1am local time.

Australian man Nigel Richardson, on his way home after a visit to England, described the heart-in-mouth moment on Twitter: “Cabin crew this is an emergency descent. The aircraft is in full control”. Sort of a good news / bad news thing. #qantas #qf2.”

But there was no danger to those on board, according to Qantas.

“It’s standard procedure to descend quickly in these circumstances and at no stage was the safety of the aircraft or passengers at risk,” the airline’s head of flying operations Captain Mike Galvin said in a statement.

One of those caught up in the scare was web developer Swathi Kantharaja, from the London borough of Barnet, who described her trip down under as a “marathon”.

The flight from Dubai should have been the second and final leg of her journey from Heathrow, but she spent nearly two full days in transit thanks to the unplanned pit stop.

She said: “I was actually sleeping when they announced we needed to put our seatbelts on. I thought it was just the usual wind turbulence until they told us we would have to land.”