AA109 LHR > LAX Returning to LHR because 'passengers suffering equilibrium'
 

American Airlines Flight AA109 London Heathrow to LAX has declared a mid-air emergency with 'several crew and passengers suffering equilibrium'.

Got as far as Iceland before the decision to abort was made.

American Airlines Flight AA109 London Heathrow to LAX declares mid-air emergency with 'several crew and passengers suffering equilibrium' - Mirror Online

American Airlines (AA) #109 ? FlightAware

Don't think they went to Iceland, looks to me like they are returning to LHR:

Flightradar24.com - Live flight tracker!

Here's a Twitter feed on the situation:

https://twitter.com/search?q=aa109&r...Ctwgr%5Esearch

"...suffering equilibrium"

Shucks! I used to have that happen all the time during my layovers in Crawley.

Surely they mean lack of equilibrium.

Headline now changed to "several crew and passengers taken ill".

Presumably a sub-editor with a more balanced education. :O

Suffering what? Sounds like old Father Jack Hackett on one of his off days.

Cannot be that serious. They opted to forego diversion to Keflavik/reykjavic in favour of flying another hour and a half back to LHR.

One has to wonder what kind of "emergency" this was. Deciding they had an emergency, they decided against Keflavik, something like 70 or 80 miles away and opted for Heathrow, something like 1200 miles and 2.5 hours distant.

WTF is equilibrium? Being a qualified First Aider and from a medical family, i have never heard that used.

Maybe they suffered from dizziness.

A friend at the airport said 9 people were reported as "unconscious" prior to landing.

Yup I aint never heard of that either. The trauma registrar I live with doesn't have a clue either... not in the context of the article anyway.

Maybe:-


https://www.zocdoc.com/answers/9697/...brium-problems


In UK some people refer to those symptoms as vertigo.


Cheers!

This seems to be the tweet with the 'equilibrium' diagnosis:

https://twitter.com/gunn_lee/status/692357061875781632

Only from the Daily Mail, but "cabin crew collapsed" and then, after arrival back at LHR, all baggage "held for checks"?


Los Angeles-bound flight returns to Heathrow due to medical emergency | Daily Mail Online

delirium + typo + spell-checker perhaps?

But, not knowing what the cause was, and therefore the possibility that more crew (including FD crew) and passengers could become ill, why all the way back to LHR? That decision puzzles me.

Also reported 45 minute before anyone boarded and that was for "testing" before paramedics boarded.
What tests would be required for luggage - security or contamination?

Would the need for specialist testing require LHR landing?

It's hard for me to think of a scenario with multiple serious illnesses where you would press on back to LHR. Maybe the folks were stable and, as speculated, got significantly worse approaching top of descent.

As far as holding the baggage for 'testing', I wonder if that was really the case. :confused:

I was a pax on a flight that had an RTO a few years ago and the bags were not available until over 12 hours later. Unfortunately, I was already in another country by then. Sounds like the RTO aircraft was towed to the maintenance hangar with pax but not bags offloaded hoping to quickly fix the engine and attempt another departure. Then the flight cancelled when the problem turned out to be more than a compressor stall.

On the other hand, maybe the AA109 plane was quarantined until a norovirus outbreak could be ruled out.

This story brings back memories of the reputation the 777-200 got at a certain airline for making crew members ill/dizzy, most especially "down the back". It almost became an article of faith that if you worked at Door 4 you would become ill/breathless at some point of the flight and crew would happily share stories about how bad it always was on the triple....As I recall it no other airline reported having the same problem, the ride quality and air circulation was looked at in some detail but I don't think any definitive cause was found and over the years the story had died a death and the "epidemic" disappeared...wonder what's going to happen on my next flight....

It certainly gets entertaining when everybody "knows" a certain aircraft makes you sick/dizzy/breathless if you work down the back, and then one person falls genuinely ill......