Emergency flight to Ercan forced to revise plan

A Turkish flight en route to Jordan, which diverted to Ercan due to a medical emergency, was forced to perform a fly-over in Antalya before heading to its final destination.

Flight TK814, operated by Turkish Airlines, departed the new Istanbul International Airport on Monday early morning, at 1:58am, bound for Amman, Jordan. During the flight, a baby reportedly faced a serious medical emergency and the pilots landed the Airbus at Ercan airport in north Nicosia at 3:53am.

According to Philenews, Greek Cypriot air traffic controllers in the Republic of Cyprus had told the pilots they would have priority to land at Larnaca International Airport, but the plane ended up responding to Turkish Cypriot messages to divert and land at Ercan, in the north.

Following a 15-minute layover at the airport in north Nicosia, where the 11-month-old baby stayed behind for medical treatment, the plane attempted to take off around 4am. But the flight plan was refused from Ercan to Amman due to a violation of protocols, as Greek Cypriot officials cite a lack of operation permit from authorities in the Republic of Cyprus.

Philenews reported that officials from the Republic of Cyprus alerted foreign officials in third countries of the flight’s path being in violation of international protocols. Following discussion for an hour and a half over the flight plan, the plane finally took off for Antalya, where it reportedly circled a number of times enough to be able to change its flight plan midair before finishing the last leg to Amman. The plane went through Israeli airspace before landing in Amman at 7:30am.

Similar incident over the weekend

The flight diversion comes a couple of days following a similar incident, where Norwegian flight DY4401 from Stockholm en route to Larnaca International Airport landed in Istanbul on Saturday due to a medical emergency.

The pilots of that flight then took off in IST and finished the final leg without incident, landing at LCA despite no direct flights officially being allowed from Turkey to the Republic of Cyprus.

No refueling was necessary in either of the two incidents.