A United Airlines Boeing 767 bound for New York declared an emergency and diverted to Heathrow on Monday 24 August after developing a technical fault shortly after entering UK airspace, according to two independent aviation news outlets that tracked the flight.
Flight UA169, a Boeing 767-400ER registered N76062, had departed Venice Marco Polo Airport at 11.21am local time for a scheduled nine-hour-35-minute crossing to Newark Liberty International. It climbed to 30,000 feet and routed over Austria, Germany and Belgium without incident before the crew transmitted a squawk 7700 code, the international signal for a general emergency, soon after crossing into British controlled airspace, aviation tracking site AIRLIVE reported.
To prepare for an unscheduled landing, the crew descended to 17,000 feet and flew a holding pattern to burn off excess weight, a manoeuvre visible on flight-tracking maps as a loop over southwest England near Bristol and Cardiff, according to a separate report from The Aviation Hub, which also tracked the flight independently. Dumping fuel is standard procedure for a long-haul jet that needs to land soon after departure, since aircraft take off carrying far more fuel than their structural landing weight allows.
After completing the fuel dump, air traffic control vectored the aircraft into Heathrow. UA169 landed on runway 09L around two hours and 35 minutes after leaving Venice, then taxied under its own power to Gate B37 at Terminal 2, where passengers disembarked normally. Both outlets reported no injuries and no indication the fault was structural o