United passengers from New York to London endured a flight to nowhere and an 11-hour delay — then got to the UK after their original plane

• A United Airlines flight to London returned to Newark less than two hours after takeoff.

• Passengers arrived in England 11 hours later on a different plane.

• The original plane then operated another flight to London and landed before the deplaned passengers.

After a United Airlines flight U-turned and landed back in Newark, passengers reached London 11 hours later than anticipated, and after their original plane.

Thursday’s Flight 934 took off from Newark Liberty International Airport shortly after 9 a.m.

However, data from Flightradar24 reveals that just around 20 minutes later, the Boeing 767 turned around short of Boston.

It then circled half a dozen occasions over upstate New York before touchdown back at Newark, 1 hour and 45 minutes after departing from there.

Returning to the flight’s origin, identified as a flight to nowhere, could make it simpler to reroute passengers or repair any points with the plane. Newark is one of United’s seven hub airports.

A United spokesperson said the flight “returned to Newark to address a possible maintenance issue.”

The 767 concerned in the incident, registered as N684UA, is 22 years previous.

“The flight landed safely, and all passengers deplaned normally at the gate,” the spokesperson said. “We arranged for a different aircraft to take our customers to London, which landed at 7:30 a.m. local time on Friday.”

Flight-tracking data reveals the second flight, UAL934D, took off from Newark shortly after 8 p.m.

That means passengers had a nine-hour wait in New Jersey before they had been back on their means to London.

The first plane was scheduled to contact down in England at 8:40 p.m. local time Thursday, but in the end, passengers arrived just over 11 hours later.

Meanwhile, flight-tracking data reveals the plane with the “possible maintenance issue” arrived in London first on Friday morning.

After diverting back to Newark, N684UA also operated Thursday’s Flight 14.

It took off at 7:21 p.m. ET and landed in London at 6:58 a.m. local time, 24 minutes before UAL934D.

A spokesperson for the Federal Aviation Administration told Business Insider it did not have a report about the flight.

Do you might have a story to share about a latest flight diversion? Contact this reporter at psyme@businessinsider.com.

Read the original article on Business Insider