Toronto-bound flight declares emergency, drops passengers in wrong country

Toronto: Passengers aboard a Cancun-to-Toronto flight faced a frightening situation on February 7, when an aircraft of Flair Airlines declared an in-flight emergency and was forced to redirect to Florida.

Flair Airlines Flight F82615 departed Cancun International Airport on February 7, climbing to its cruising altitude of 37,000 feet before suffering a cabin pressurization issue.

Oxygen masks were deployed in the cabin — giving passengers of the Boeing 737 MAX-8 a good scare — and forcing the aircraft to descend down to 10,000, and later 7,700 feet.

Data from aircraft tracking site flightradar24.com shows the passenger jet’s ascent over the Gulf of Mexico and the point where it diverts east and begins its emergency descent toward Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport in Florida.

The flight crew used the infamous squawk code 7700 — which indicates a general emergency — to alert air traffic controllers of the developing situation. Ground crews immediately granted the plane priority to land at Fort Lauderdale Hollywood.

Any incident involving a 737 MAX-8 aircraft is going to raise questions due to the jet’s notoriety for a pair of fatal crashes in 2019 and the fleet’s subsequent grounding, though neither of those tragedies was related to cabin de-pressurisation.

Flair has been flying the aircraft in question since June 2021, which first took to the skies almost two years prior during the aforementioned grounding.

The aircraft remained grounded in Fort Lauderdale. And for a while, the passengers of the flight were also stranded in an unplanned stopover in the US.

Mike Arnot, spokesperson for Flair Airlines, said, “F82615 diverted to Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, when the aircraft experienced a depressurisation.”

“The crew responded ably, and the flight landed without further incident. Passengers were provided with accommodations and food,” said Arnot, confirming that the stranded passengers were “re-accommodated on other flights the next day and today by Flair Airlines for their return to Toronto.”

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