A Delta flight bound for New York JFK had to perform an emergency landing back into it’s departure airport of Zurich yesterday (June 16).
Information has been released pertinent to the incident at hand.
Without further ado, let’s get into it…
Delta Flight DL53 – Zurich to New York…
Delta flight DL53, which made the emergency landing, is a routine scheduled flight between Zurich and New York JFK.
Furthermore, the aircraft involved in the incident was N840MH.
As per data from Planespotters.net, N840MH is a 25.3 year old Boeing 767-400ER that was delivered to the airline back in May 2001.
Of the 767-400 variant, Delta has 21 of them in their fleet, of which 20 are in active service, and one is parked, with an average fleet age of 25.5 years.
As well as the 767-400, the airline has the following other aircraft in their mainline fleet:
- 86 Airbus A220s.
- 57 Airbus A319s.
- 44 Airbus A320s.
- 225 Airbus A321s.
- 81 Airbus A330s.
- 41 Airbus A350s.
- 80 Boeing 717s.
- 240 Boeing 737s.
- 90 Boeing 757s.
- 36 Boeing 767-300s.
In total, Delta has 1,001 aircraft in their mainline fleet, of which 969 are in active service and 32 are parked, with an average fleet age of 15.1 years.
Delta flight DL53, which performed the emergency landing, departed from Zurich at 1747 local time on June 16, which was around four hours later than it’s planned scheduled departure time.
Moments after departure, the aircraft made a u-turn back to the Swiss airport, landing safely without further incident under 25 minutes following it’s initial rotation.
What Was The Reason for the Emergency Landing?
As per The Aviation Herald, it is understood that the reason for the emergency landing involving Delta flight DL53 Zurich-New York was due to the main landing gear not retracting.
It is believed that air traffic controllers made the crew aware of the gear not retracting.
The following was heard on the ATC feeds:
“Just to confirm, are you aware your gear is still out?”
As a result of this incident, the flight was cancelled and so was today’s rotation (June 17).
Data from Flightradar24 highlights the fact that N840MH will be positioning to Amsterdam Schiphol Airport later today, presumably to realign with the operational network and start operating flights again.
If this is the case today, then it would indicate the problem with the landing gear has been fixed.
As soon as we have more information, we will update you accordingly.
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