BA294 issues?
 

Curious routing for the BA294 O'Hare-LHR flight today. Seemed to be planned to terminate at MAN, with a 773 booked on the shuttle run presumably to ferry the passengers for the remaining part of their journey. However it ended up landing at Shannon instead. A guess suggests a known technical issue that became more urgent during the Atlantic crossing meaning the first available airport was deemed wise, but anyone know the actual story?

According to BA Source it was late departing O'Hare due weather and planned Manchester as destination due crew hours limitation.
Presumably flight time to Manchester was longer than expected so went to Shannon before crew ran out of hours.

Based on many years SLF experience, transatlantic flights that overfly Manchester go nowhere near Shannon, and vice versa. Perhaps they went into Shannon because they had a more southerly routing than expected.

The appearance of a 773 on the LHR-MAN run may be linked to the BA294 issue, but it could be a coincidence caused by non-availability of an A320-series. It would presumably be much cheaper to fly a replacement crew up to MAN on a regular service than to send them on their own aircraft.

Aircraft is now enroute from Shannon to LHR.

Flightplanned as BAW294F, which presumably means that it's carrying those delayed pax.

I hope they managed an evening at Bunratty. :O

Always thought "F" was a ferry flight, and as such, carrying no pax. I have seen "D" for delayed or diverted. But that may not be BA's c/s policy.

A non-revenue ferry flight (aka positioning flight) will normally carry a BA9xxxP flight number and use BAW9xxx for the flightplan/callsign. Interestingly, there was also a BA294F yesterday - a B77W landing at LHR just after 5pm, having been sent to Shannon (as BA9158P) but presumably not able to accommodate all the stranded passengers so the lucky(?) few left over would have been rattling around on today's 747.

Incidentally Heathrow's Arrivals web page is still showing yesterday's BA294 as "On Time 07:45".

Flight BA294 from Chicago to London | Heathrow

It was an unplanned refueling stop resulting in crew timeout.

Or, if thebasource.com is to be believed, an unplanned crew timeout resulting in a refuelling stop. :O