Originally Posted by
joeyE
How urgent of a situation is this? Meaning, is it ‘get on the ground immediately as the plane is in imminent danger’, or ‘find the nearest large oneworld hub to track down a spare part?’
After looking at the path, it seems like they could have diverted to Portugal or back to Madrid but instead flew a fairly significant distance up to London. Just wondering...
Plane seems NOT to have been in imminent danger if it descended to 10,000 MSL or below and proceeded to LHR, bypassing fields with long runways that could take a nearly fully laden and fueled 777. (It’s possible they’d have had to circle and dump fuel for some time to land at some nearer airports.)
Civil aviation requirements include supplemental oxygen on unpressurized aircraft above 10,000 feet. So, it appears the pilots descended and depressurized (normal pressurized cabin altitude for a 777 is ~8,000 feet MSL) and proceeded to a major airport where passengers could be rerouted and that had both engineers / mechanics and parts to address this.