The flight departed more or less on schedule, taking off at 7:46PM, and starting its long southbound journey, flying over the airspace of Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Egypt, and Sudan. As the jet flew over the Red Sea and approached Eritrea, it suddenly turned around.

The decision was made to return all the way to Vienna. The aircraft landed there at 5:25AM, around 9hr40min after it first departed Vienna. Suffice it to say that a nearly 10-hour “flight to nowhere” isn’t ideal for anyone.

Austrian flight OS17 returned to Vienna

Eritrea rejected this Austrian flight, causing issues

Every so often we see an airline operate a very long “flight to nowhere.” Typically it happens due to some maintenance issue that doesn’t pose an immediate safety concern, but which needs to be addressed before any additional flights can be operated. In those situations, there’s a huge benefit to having the aircraft fly back to base, even if it’s costly and inconvenient.

However, this diversion had nothing to do with a maintenance issue. Instead, it has to do with Austrian reportedly not having permission to use Eritrea’s airspace. aeroTELEGRAPH quotes an Austrian spokesperson, who blames this on Eritrea’s “failure to grant overflight permission,” and describes this as “inexplicable and unforeseeable.”

The airline claims that an overflight permit had been issued for this flight, but Eritrea’s air traffic control didn’t authorize the flight into Eritrean airspace. The airline even points out how it flew exactly the same route a couple of days earlier, without any issues.

The following day, on November 3, the same flight took a significantly different path, clearly to avoid that airspace. Once the aircraft made it to Egypt, it instead took a turn to the east, flying over Saudi Arabia and Oman, to stay clear of the corridor of airspace that would take it near Eritrea.

The modified path for Austrian flight OS17

This has to be one of the more unusual diversions we’ve seen. What we don’t know is why Eritrea denied the Austrian jet permission to operate this route. Was it just bureaucracy and something wasn’t signed off correctly, or…?

Interestingly the flight that diverted was the first one of the calendar month on that route. Could it be that Austrian somehow didn’t have permission for November, or is that completely off base?

Some may be wondering why the Austrian 777 didn’t just change its flight path. There are presumably a few factors at play:

• The jet probably couldn’t continue to Mauritius without refueling, while still staying above minimum reserve levels
• Diverting somewhere else to refuel would have likely caused the crew to time out, and that would’ve been mighty complicated
• Simply put, this is a tricky part of the world when it comes to logistics and red tape for air traffic control, with countries like Somalia, Yemen, etc.

Bottom line

An Austrian Boeing 777 scheduled to fly to Mauritius had to return to Vienna, where it landed nearly 10 hours after it first departed. This diversion was due to some sort of an issue with Eritrea air traffic control. An airline spokesperson claims that an overflight permit had been issued for the flight, but Eritrea’s air traffic control didn’t authorize the flight to use its airspace. This has to be one of those situations that’s hard for a pilot to explain to passengers.

What do you make of this Austrian 777’s return to Vienna?