\n On the morning of Tuesday, August 25th, SWISS flight from Chicago to Zurich issued a distress signal over the Atlantic and landed safely on an Azore island off the coast of Portugal.\n <\/p>\n
According to Oliver Buchhofer<\/a>, director of operations at SWISS, the emergency landing was caused by \u201ca chemical smell on board,\u201d whose origin has not yet been identified.<\/p>\n Nobody was injured during the operation and the airline is sending another aircraft to pick up the stranded passengers and bring them to Zurich.<\/p>\n D\u00e9j\u00e0-vu<\/p>\n This is the third time in a span of a month that Switzerland\u2019s national airline has experienced problems in mid-air between Switzerland and the United States – though the first two were caused by reckless passengers and were not due to technical glitches.<\/p>\n The first such incident<\/a> happened on July 27th.<\/p>\n A headphone charging case fell between seat cushions and subsequently overheated on a flight from Zurich to New York, filling the Business cabin with smoke.<\/p>\n Not knowing immediately what the cause of the smoke was, the aircraft declared an emergency and landed in Bangor, Maine.<\/p>\n Then, on August 9th, another SWISS flight<\/a> – this time from Zurich to Boston – had been en-route for three hours when smoke was detected in the cabin.<\/p>\n It made a swift U-turn and landed at the nearest airport, Dublin.<\/p>\n In this particular case (and unbeknownst to the pilots at the time), a smoking power bank had triggered the incident \u2013 even though the airline had previously issued restrictions<\/a> on transporting these devices in carry-on luggage.<\/p>\n No injuries were reported in either of these emergency landings.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s not all<\/p>\n It appears that SWISS does not hold monopoly over emergency landings on the Switzerland-US route this summer.<\/p>\n