BA FLIGHT TO CHICAGO RETURNS TO HEATHROW AFTER EMERGENCY DECLARED

A British Airways flight from London Heathrow to Chicago's O'Hare airport turned back and landed safely at Heathrow after declaring an emergency over a "technical issue," the airline said. Flight BA295, operated by a Boeing 777-200, departed Heathrow shortly after midday on Monday and issued a squawk 7700 alert, the code used to signal a general emergency, roughly an hour into the journey. Tracking data from FlightAware showed the aircraft descending sharply from its cruising altitude of 37,000 feet to 9,000 feet within minutes while over Ireland, before making a U-turn back towards Britain. The jet then held in a pattern over the Bristol Channel, between Pembrokeshire and North Devon, to burn fuel before landing at Heathrow at 5.03pm. British Airways has not confirmed the exact nature of the technical issue.

Passengers reported that oxygen masks dropped from the cabin ceiling during the descent, which the aviation site AirLive said was consistent with a cabin depressurisation event, though this has not been confirmed by the airline. Passenger Tom Nicholls told the Mirror that the descent "didn't feel like it was descending rapidly," but added there was "a bit of uncertainty onboard" after the masks deployed. He said a couple sitting in front of him could not reach their masks initially and had to move to a spare seat, by which point the captain had announced the aircraft was below 10,000 feet and the masks were no longer required. The flight had been scheduled to take nine hours.

The flight was subsequently cancelled, and British Airways said most passengers were rebooked onto services departing on Tuesday. A spokesperson for the airline said the safety of customers and crew was its top priority, and that the aircraft's pilots returned to Heathrow following the technical issue before passengers disembarked normally. The spokesperson said teams were working to get affected customers' travel plans back on track as quickly as possible. British Airways has not given a timeframe for a full explanation of what caused the technical issue.