British Airways 777 Diverts To Gander, Then Keflavik: What A Journey!

Passengers on a transatlantic British Airways flight are currently getting quite the tour across the Atlantic, with some passengers on a three-stop routing…

British Airways flight diverts to Gander, then Keflavik

British Airways flight BA52 ordinarily operates from Grand Cayman (GCM) to Nassau (NAS) to London (LHR), with that first segment being one of the carrier’s fifth freedom flights. The flight departing last night (on Tuesday, April 8, 2025) was operated by a 28-year-old Boeing 777-200ER with the registration code G-VIID.

The flight from Grand Cayman to Nassau operated without a hitch, but sadly the same can’t be said about the transatlantic flight, from Nassau to London.

The aircraft departed Nassau roughly on schedule, at 10:24PM last night, and was supposed to arrive in London at 11:40AM this morning. The flight operated as planned for the first four hours, over the Atlantic Ocean, quite a ways off the coast of North America.

However, as the plane was about to start the main part of its Atlantic crossing, there was a medical emergency, requiring a diversion. So the aircraft ended up diverting to Gander, Canada (YQX). It arrived there at 5:02AM this morning, roughly five hours after it departed.

Once the passenger was offloaded and the aircraft refueled, it eventually departed Gander, to continue its journey across the Atlantic. The plane took off from Gander at 7:32AM local time.

There was an issue, though. The crew couldn’t operate all the way to London without timing out, given limits on the length of duty days. So operations at British Airways got creative. The aircraft then rerouted to Keflavik, Iceland (KEF), where it arrived at 1PM, roughly three hours after it departed. That got the passengers closer to their intended destination, but not quite all the way.

The plan is now for the jet to depart Keflavik at 6:15PM, arriving in London at 10PM, a bit over 10 hours behind schedule. Presumably what’s going on here is that British Airways is flying in an extra crew from London on a regularly scheduled commercial flight, so that they can then operate that last portion of the journey to London.

When you look at the entire flight status, this is quite an itinerary, eh?

British Airways seems to be handling this situation well

Obviously medical diversions are complicated and costly for airlines. That being said, it sure seems like British Airways is doing a good job minimizing the inconvenience for passengers here. Sure, an aircraft rerouting twice is less than ideal, but it’s better than the plane potentially being stuck somewhere, and passengers having to spend the night at an airport.

There are lots of logistics that need to be taken into account here — you have labor contracts that need to be honored, and repositioning an entire crew to an airport via a commercial flight takes some work. So while this isn’t ideal, it does seem like the best outcome in such a situation.

Bottom line

A British Airways 777 flying from Nassau to London had to first divert to Gander for a medical emergency, and then to Keflavik for a crew change, given that the crew would’ve otherwise timed out. Given that this was already a one stop service originating in Grand Cayman, this is making for a long day. Passengers are expected to arrive in London a little over 10 hours behind schedule.

What do you make of this British Airways double reroute?