While Emirates has a fairly diverse network of destinations around the world, the Canadian city of Winnipeg is not one of them (at present, Toronto is the airline's only Canadian airport). However, passengers aboard Emirates flight EK235 flying from Dubai to Chicago on February 7th had a chance to see the city's airport, as their 777 was forced to divert after experiencing flight control issues.

Incident details

On Monday, February 7th, the crew flying an Emirates Boeing 777-300ER, operating flight EK235 from Dubai to Chicago O'Hare had received a flight control caution message. According to the Aviation Herald, the message noted that the 777's left-hand elevator had been 'locked out.' Flying over Greenland at FL320 at the time of the notification, the crew diverted to the Canadian city of Winnipeg, Manitoba, after performing all relevant checklists.

According to FlightRadar24.com data, the aircraft registered A6-EQD touched down at Winnipeg Richardson International Airport (YWG) approximately four and a half hours later, at 19:12 UTC. With Winnipeg's Central Time Zone, this landing would have taken place at 13:12.

Aircraft still on the ground one week later

Flight data shows that A6-EQD is still on the ground nearly a week after the diversion took place. Canada's Transportation Safety Board (TSB) was reporting that the maintenance inspection was ongoing. According to the Aviation Herald, the TSB stated that "once a maintenance solution has been identified, the operator will ferry the aircraft back to Dubai."

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Quite interesting is the fact that this exact aircraft, registered A6-EQD, encountered flight control issues last month when flying from Dubai to San Francisco. This incident saw the 777 divert to St. Petersburg, Russia. Indeed, an issue of a similar nature occurring within several weeks on the same aircraft would appear to be more than a coincidence.

Simple Flying has reached out to Emirates for comment on the February 7th incident. At the time of this article's publication, no response was received.

Passengers forced to spend a night in Winnipeg?

While the Aviation Herald does not specify what happened to the aircraft's passengers, we do know that another Emirates 777 was 'diverted' to Winnipeg the very next day. Registered A6-EPZ, the aircraft also operating flight EK235, appears to have made the stop on its way to Chicago- this time appearing to be a planned visit.

The distance between Winnipeg and Chicago is relatively short. While a drive from Winnipeg to Chicago would typically be a 13-hour long ordeal (dependent on border crossing conditions)), one might have assumed that Emirates would put affected passengers on alternate flights to get them to Chicago rather than having them endure a 24 delay.

In this case, it appears that the second Emirates flight to Winnipeg was sent to pick up the stranded passengers and take them onward to O'Hare. A contributor on The Aviation Herald article's comment thread confirmed that A6-EPZ's diversion to Winnipeg was indeed made to collect passengers, crew, and freight. The contributor also noted that this aircraft was carrying Emirates engineers to check the incident aircraft.

What do you think of this situation- and the fact that this aircraft has also experienced issues somewhat recently? Let us know by leaving a comment.