A SWISS aircraft was forced to land in the central Asian country on Wednesday because of a medical emergency involving the co‑pilot.
Keystone-SDA
A Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) plane that made an unscheduled stop in Kazakhstan last Wednesday arrived back in Zurich on Friday morning with 221 passengers on board. The aircraft was forced to land in the central Asian country because of a medical emergency involving the co‑pilot.
+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
The Airbus A350 touched down at Zurich Airport at 6:45am, the airline said in a statement on Friday. The original flight was en route from the South Korean capital Seoul to Zurich on Wednesday when it was forced to divert to the Kazakh city of Almaty because of a medical emergency involving the co‑pilot.
Three doctors on board provided first aid, but advised that the aircraft land so the co‑pilot could receive appropriate medical treatment, SWISS said. After landing in Almaty, the co‑pilot was taken to hospital.
All passengers on Friday’s return flight had been on the original service. Six travellers chose to continue their journey from Almaty by other means. Those who arrived in Zurich were rebooked onto onward connections to reach their final destinations.
The co‑pilot remains in Almaty but is said to be in good health, according to SWISS. Another crew member has stayed with him. The airline apologised to passengers for the disruption and stressed that the health of its colleague had the highest priority.
Adapted from Italian by AI/sb
We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.
Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.
If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at english@swissinfo.ch.
