Gulf Air Airbus A330 at Heathrow, 13th December
 

Gulf Air is tweeting about an emergency descent and landing at LHR today. Notably, the flight carried only 89 passengers. Rather light load.

Anyone know any details of the incident itself?

Don't know the reason but on Planefinder the aircraft rapidly descended to 8000 ft over the North Sea. Pressurisation????

If they'd had in air wifi they could have got another copy from the iplayer

mrs c on board
 

Mrs C was on board in economy. The crew were collecting the headsets in when there was a prerecorded emergency announcement, the oxygen masks dropped, the crew dissapeared, presumably to positions, and the masks were used for about 20mins but came off prior to landing. She reported a smell not unlike burnt plastic. Other than that, not much else to say apart from the fact that several pax appeared terrifed, and one vomited.

The smell was probably from the oxygen generators which use a chemical reaction to create O2. Considerable heat is given off during this reaction which is why most countries forbid their carriage as air cargo after the AirTran/Valujet crash.

next steps....
 

... and what then happens to the 'plane and its outbound flight? Was/could it be reworked at LHR or does it have to be flown to base, re-certified etc before it can take SLF again?

Departed at midday today back to Bahrain as GF006D.