Qantas A380 diverts to Baku in Azerbaijan after passenger onboard taken ill

A Qantas Airbus A380 was forced to make an emergency landing in Baku, Azerbaijan, after one of the passengers onboard suffered a cardiac arrest. The aircraft was operating a scheduled passenger service from London to Singapore on June 8, 2025, when the crew elected to divert to Baku so that the passenger could receive urgent medical assistance.

Qantas flight QF002 had departed from London-Heathrow Airport (LHR) at 21:12 local time on June 8, 2025, for the airline’s daily 13-hour flight to Singapore-Changi Airport (SIN) with onward service to Sydney International Airport (SYD). However, according to flight data obtained from Flightradar24, the flight had been airborne for around five hours and 30 minutes and was approaching the Turkmenistan/Afghanistan border and cruising at 37,000ft when the drama unfolded.

According to ABC News Australia, the London to Singapore flight was forced to make an urgent landing in Azerbaijan after “a passenger suffered a life-threatening cardiac emergency mid-flight.” The plane eventually landed at Baku Heydar Aliyev International Airport (GYD) at around 07:55 local time, some seven hours and 40 minutes after leaving London.

Flightradar24A doctor who was on board the service,  Hamish Urquhart, told ABC that the passenger involved, a woman in her 60s, experienced a major cardiac event during the flight. Dr Urquhart, along with an ophthalmologist and a retired surgeon from Melbourne, helped stabilise the woman while the plane was preparing to land.

He told ABC that the pilot had to make a “dramatic 180-degree turn” to reach Baku, the closest airport capable of accommodating a large plane. “In the air, it was a bit stressful as we were flying towards Afghanistan,” he said. He added that the woman, who was travelling from the United Kingdom with her husband, was later transported to a nearby hospital.

With the A380 superjumbo and its 400 passengers on the ground in Baku, and with the crew heading out of duty hours, the service was forced to be curtailed in Azerbaijan while the crew obtained the legal rest required to continue the flight to Singapore. Passengers were advised by the airline that they would have to stay overnight in Baku to wait for onward transport to Singapore. All were provided with overnight accommodation and were expected to be flown on to Singapore on June 9, 2025.

At the time of writing, VH-OQB, the Qantas A380 involved in the emergency landing, remains on the ground in Baku but is due to depart for the onward flight to Singapore later on June 9, 2025.    

Ryan Fletcher / ShutterstockWhile the landing had been uneventful and the ill passenger taken to hospital, the arrival of 400 other passengers had taken the airport, a designated diversion point for Qantas, somewhat by surprise. According to Dr Urquhart, the passengers were left for several hours while Qantas arranged for visas for everyone and arranged the overnight hotel accommodation. A Qantas spokesperson said that the “diversion caused the operating crew to reach their duty limits, meaning the flight could not continue onwards the same day”.

The event is not the first time that a Qantas A380 has touched down unexpectedly at Baku’s main international airport. In December 2022, a cargo smoke warning light forced another Qantas A380, this time flying from Singapore to London, to divert to Baku after about ten hours of flying. The reason for the diversion was later discovered to be a faulty warning light, by which time the airline had already dispatched another A380 from Sydney to collect the stranded passengers and fly them to London. The aircraft involved in that incident was one of Qantas’s other ten-strong fleet of A380s.  

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