Ouch: Virgin Atlantic’s Rough A350 Diversion To Diyarbakir

Airline logistics are incredibly complex, and while the diversion as such was outside of Virgin Atlantic’s control, the handling of this leaves a lot to be desired (thanks to PYOK for flagging this).

Virgin Atlantic medical diversion suffers hard landing

This incident started on Wednesday, April 2, 2025, and involves Virgin Atlantic flight VS358, scheduled to operate the 4,487-mile service from London (LHR) to Mumbai (BOM). The flight was operated by a four-year-old Airbus A350-1000 with the registration code G-VTEA.

The flight departed Heathrow more or less on schedule, at 12:01PM, and began its journey across Europe and the Black Sea. However, around four hours after departure, there was a medical emergency involving a passenger, and the decision was made to divert, in order for the passenger to get medical attention.

The issue is, at this point, the plane was over eastern Türkiye, not far from the border with Iran, Iraq, and Syria. So there were limited diversion points, especially among major airports. The decision was made to divert to Diyarbakır (DIY), which is both a military airbase and a fairly small commercial airport, with regional service from carriers like AJet, Pegasus Airlines, and Turkish Airlines.

The intent was that the plane was just going to briefly stop there to drop off passengers, and then continue the journey to Mumbai. That’s not how things played out, though.

Unfortunately the aircraft suffered a hard landing, so an inspection needed to be carried out by maintenance personnel, in order to ensure the plane could continue service without any work being performed. As you may have guessed, there were no A350 engineers at the airport, stranding the aircraft, passengers, and crew. For what it’s worth, the runway at the airport is over 11,000 feet long, so that’s plenty big for an A350.

Virgin Atlantic strands passengers at remote airport

Admittedly this can be described as a “when it rains, it pours” situation. Medical diversions happen, and this wasn’t supposed to be a big deal, but then the hard landing incident made this a much bigger issue.

Having a wide body jet stranded at an international airport with no ground support, and where many travelers don’t have a visa to enter the country, is a really rough situation, and I sure wouldn’t want to be in charge of the logistics.

That being said, it sure seems like Virgin Atlantic’s handling of this should have been a bit better. Long story short, passengers ended up being stranded for nearly two days.

At first, passengers were reportedly told that a Virgin Atlantic engineer was being flown to the airport, but that wouldn’t be a straightforward process, given that the airport doesn’t have that much service. So for the first 24 hours, passengers had to stay in the terminal, where they had to sleep on the floor, and claim they didn’t receive sufficient food, or have access to usable toilets.

Local authorities then finally made an exception regarding travelers entering the country, so they were able to be put into hotels for the second night.

A Virgin Atlantic engineer finally landed at the airport on Friday morning, nearly two days after the aircraft first diverted, and gave it the all-clear to continue to Mumbai. It appears that the plane is finally boarding, and will continue its journey to Mumbai.

While it’s good that everyone can get on their way safely, it sure seems to me like this could’ve been handled better. For one, why did it take nearly 48 hours to fly in an engineer? There are all kinds of routings between London and Diyarbakır that take around eight hours.

Sure, it takes some time to find an engineer, have them pack their bags, etc., but it seems like worst case scenario, an engineer should’ve been there well within 24 hours. Alternatively, you’d think that the airline could’ve contracted with some A350 engineer in the country (after all, Turkish Airlines flies this aircraft as well) to carry out an inspection, or something.

I imagine that some airlines would’ve otherwise flown in a rescue aircraft, with a fresh crew and an engineer onboard. Of course that’s costly, but it’s also a reasonable way to take care of passengers. Admittedly Virgin Atlantic has a rather small fleet, so I imagine the airline doesn’t have as many spare aircraft.

No matter how you slice it, it just seems like taking nearly two days to carry out a basic inspection on an A350 with stranded passengers is a bit much.

Bottom line

A Virgin Atlantic Airbus A350 was stranded in Diyarbakır, Türkiye, for nearly two days, after a medical diversion suffered a hard landing, requiring an inspection. The airline ended up having to fly in an engineer to inspect the aircraft, though it took nearly two days before the airline found someone to do that.

Fortunately passengers finally seem to be headed to Mumbai, but I can only imagine how frustrated passengers must be.

What do you make of this Virgin Atlantic A350 diversion?