An American Airlines passenger plane declared mid-air emergency while flying over Cuba, and returned to the air hub from which it had departed. Flight trackers show how flight AA2259, operated by a Boeing 737 MAX 8, left the Miami International Airport (MIA) on Saturday evening, more than an hour later than scheduled.
The aircraft was originally due to leave the Florida capital at 7.25pm, but only took off from runway 26L at 8.38pm. The American Airlines flight’s destination airport was Quito – but it didn’t reach its intended destination during that flight.
Rather, after having climbed to a cruising altitude of 31,000 feet and reached the Cuban airspace, the flight crew declared a Squawk 7700 code, which indicates a general emergency.
The nature of the emergency was not immediately clear, with AirLive claiming the crew reported a “Level 4 disturbance”, which “denotes the most serious category of passenger interference”.
The crew initiated a U-turn and, as shown by Flight Radar 24, safely returned to Miami airport.
