An Air France flight bound for Tokyo was forced to make an unexpected diversion to Georgia on Monday after turning around midway through its journey.<\/p>\n
PARIS \u2014 Air France flight AF186, a Boeing 777-300ER (registration F-GSQD), departed Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG) this morning at 09:33 CEST. The aircraft was scheduled for a routine 13-hour transcontinental flight to Tokyo Haneda Airport (HND).<\/p>\n
Mid-Air U-Turn<\/p>\n
According to flight tracking data, the aircraft was cruising smoothly at 32,000 feet just north of Turkmenistan\u2014roughly six hours into the flight\u2014when the flight crew made the decision to execute a sharp U-turn.<\/p>\n
The widebody jet routed toward Tbilisi International Airport (TBS) in Georgia, where it safely touched down on runway 31L. The plane spent a little over seven hours in the air from its initial departure before landing.<\/p>\n
Quick Turnaround Planned<\/p>\n
While Air France has not yet released an official statement regarding the specific reason for the diversion\u2014which is often indicative of a minor technical issue or a passenger medical emergency\u2014the airline appears to be handling the situation rapidly.<\/p>\n
Air France has announced plans for a brief, 52-minute stopover in Tbilisi to resolve the issue and refuel. The airline has updated its schedule, targeting a departure from Tbilisi at 19:40 local time to resume the journey to Tokyo.<\/p>\n
Flight Status Summary:<\/p>\n
Aircraft: Boeing 777-300ER (F-GSQD)Origin: Paris Charles de Gaulle (CDG)Diversion Airport: Tbilisi International (TBS), parked on remote standEstimated Resumed Departure: 19:40 Local Time<\/p>\n
This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Air France flight bound for Tokyo was forced to make an unexpected diversion to Georgia on Monday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16223,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4528,12272,12273,5,12274],"class_list":["post-16222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-france","tag-af","tag-af186","tag-f-gsqd","tag-france","tag-tbs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}