British Airways jet drops 28,000ft before emergency landing at Heathrow

A British Airways Boeing 777 flying from London to Chicago made an emergency landing back at Heathrow on Monday after losing about 28,000ft of altitude in roughly seven minutes, flight-tracking data and the airline showed. No injuries were reported.

Flight BA295 took off from Heathrow's Terminal 5 at 11.50am local time and had been airborne for about an hour, cruising at 37,000ft over Ireland, when it began a rapid descent to around 9,000ft, flight-tracking service FlightAware showed. The crew set the transponder to the general emergency code 7700.

Images from the landing showed oxygen masks had dropped and were worn by passengers. British Airways said only that its pilots returned to Heathrow after "a technical issue"; British media reported the cause appeared to be a loss of cabin pressure, though this has not been officially confirmed.

The aircraft turned around and flew for about four hours over the Bristol Channel, dumping excess fuel as a precaution before its weight was low enough to land, La Stampa and Il Fatto Quotidiano reported. It touched down safely at Heathrow at around 5pm, four hours and 47 minutes after take-off.

"The safety of our customers and crew is always a priority," a British Airways spokeswoman said, according to the Daily Mirror. The airline said passengers disembarked normally and that it was working to get them on to Chicago as quickly as possible.

The UK's National Air Traffic Services, which runs the country's air traffic control, has faced criticism in recent months after separate technical failures caused widespread disruption, Philenews reported: a September fault led to nearly 2,000 flight cancellations, and a fire at an electrical substation caused a blackout affecting more than 1,300 flights.