An Aer Lingus flight from Chicago to Shannon was diverted to Canada yesterday after the smell of burning plastic was reported on board.
Flight EI124, which was carrying 303 passengers and 12 crew at the time, left Chicago airport at 1am Irish time en route to Shannon via Dublin.
Several hours into the flight, however, the smell of burning plastic was reported in the cabin, prompting the captain to divert immediately to Goose Bay airport in Labrador, eastern Canada. The Airbus A330 made an emergency landing there at 4.50am.
"After a technical difficulty was detected, the decision was made to land the aircraft. It landed safely and all passengers disembarked without any problem," said a spokeswoman for the airline. The landing was precautionary and the passengers were in no danger, she added. All were accommodated in a local hotel overnight.
Aer Lingus engineers were dispatched to Goose Bay yesterday morning aboard an Aer Lingus flight travelling from Dublin to Boston. The company said the plane had been repaired and was serviceable again last night. It was expected it would leave Goose Bay at 12.15am Irish time to arrive in Dublin at 8.30am today.
Because the airline's engineers had to be flown to Goose Bay aboard a redirected Aer Lingus flight that continued on its route to Boston after making the drop-off, Aer Lingus was forced to cancel its EI136 flight from Dublin to Boston yesterday afternoon. All affected passengers were placed on other flights to the US, while flights out of the US were not perturbed.
The investigation into the cause of the incident was continuing last night, the spokeswoman said.
Goose Bay, in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, is the largest air force base in north-eastern America and is used for tactical exercises by the Canadian, British, Italian and German air forces. Because of the size and length of its runway, it can receive all types of commercial aircraft, and is used by NASA as an alternative landing site for its space shuttle.
The incident was the third time in five days that a flight en route to Ireland was re-routed because of a safety alert.
Last Wednesday, a Ryanair flight from Paris to Dublin was redirected to Prestwick airport in Scotland after a note in a magazine was passed to the cabin crew, claiming there was a bomb on board.