American Airlines flight with 14 M'sian onboard makes U-turn after departure

American Airlines flight AA 104 to London had to make a U-turn 45 minutes after taking off from the John F Kennedy Airport (JFK) here at 9pm Saturday following a technical problem.

Onboard the flight was RTM cameraman Mohamad Zamzy Othman, along with six other members of the Malaysian media.

In his text messages to Bernama through the Facebook Messenger system, Mohamad Zamzy said they were shocked when the captain informed them that there was a technical problem and that they had to return to JFK.

"After turning back, we have to wait for about two hours for the repair work to be done before they allowed us to leave for London on the same flight. We were scheduled to arrive in London at 8.50 am but we arrived at 2.30pm instead.

"As a result, we missed our connecting Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight to Kuala Lumpur and now, we are still trying to find the next available flight to bring us home," he texted.

Fourteen Malaysians were in the flight, including the six pressmen, Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Anifah Aman's press secretary Datin Nirvana Jalil Ghani and Wisma Putra (Foreign Ministry) officials.

The six members of the media were RTM Editor Wan Lukman Mohd Fisol, reporters, from Utusan Malaysia (Kasthuri Jeevan), Sabah Times (Zulhayati Dzulkfli) and Daily Express (Fiona), as well as Sabah TV3 cameraman Fairuz Yazer.

Meanwhile, Kasthuri, in her Facebook update at 1am (New York time) wrote: "Our flight just made a U-turn after 45mins of journey."

At 2 am, she updated the status with: "Had to return back to John F Kennedy Airport due to some technical issues, might stay back to catch another flight."

All of them were in New York since Oct 14 to cover the election for five non-permanent seats in the United Nations Security Council, in which Malaysia was contesting for the Asia Pacific group.

Malaysia won one of the seats, taking 187 out of 192 votes cast.