Boeing 737 makes emergency descent from 34,000 to 10,000 feet in 8 minutes

Pilots on a Boeing 737 had to place the aircraft on a rapid emergency descent on Tuesday, January 26, after an abnormality in flight over the Atlantic Ocean.

According to a report, the aircraft involved was the Boeing 737-400F registered under registration TF-BBN, operated by Bluebird Nordic, cargo flight number BO6810 from Dublin, Ireland, to Keflavik, Iceland.

The jet had 3 crew members and 7.2 tons of cargo on board, and it had already maintained the cruise level of 34 thousand feet (FL340) for about 40 minutes, in the southwest region of the Faroe Islands, when the crew started a return and a emergency descent to 10,000 feet (FL100), which took just over 8 minutes and 30 seconds.

The nearest destination for the emergency diversion was Aberdeen, Scotland, where the aircraft flew at 10,000 feet and then safely landed on runway 16 about 50 minutes after leaving FL340 at 8:52 UTC.

The Emergency Services in Dublin and Aberdeen reported that they had been alerted to an aircraft with a possible "landing difficulty".

Despite this, the airline reported that the crew acted according to procedures after verifying the problem in question, and that the aircraft and crew were never in danger and landed normally.