Two Germanwings flights forced to make emergency landings

Two Germanwings flights have been forced to make emergency landings in two days - one over a suspected oil leak and another after a passenger and a cabin crew member fell ill.

Today, Germanwings flight 4U814 to Venice was diverted to Stuttgart as the Airbus A319 aircraft appeared to be losing oil, the airline said in a statement.

The flight, which had 123 passengers and five crew members on board, took off from Cologne at 9.55am local time.

Germanwings, a budget unit of German airline Lufthansa , has been in the spotlight after one of its planes crashed into a mountain in the French Alps last week, killing everyone on board. 

The carrier said the pilots shut off one of the aircraft's engines and headed for Stuttgart when the problem was detected.

'This is a standard safety procedure. It was not an emergency landing,' it said, adding the aircraft was being examined by technicians. 

Yesterday, another Germanwings plane was forced to make an unscheduled landing in Venice after a passenger and a flight attendant fell ill during the flight, the budget carrier says.

A statement issued by the Cologne-based airline said the pair required medical treatment for 'an acute feeling of sickness', disputing reports that the twin-engine plane landed after a nervous passenger suffered a panic attack.

The unscheduled stop occurred less than two weeks after a Germanwings plane crashed into the French Alps, killing all 150 people on board.

In yesterday's incident, an Airbus A319 was carrying 145 passengers and five crew members from Hanover, Germany to Rome when it diverted to Venice.

Flight 4U3882 was nearing the conclusion of its one hour and 40 minute journey when it turned around north-east of Bologna and landed at Venice Marco Polo Airport.

Passenger Eugenio Bartolini, a schoolteacher from Rome, told Italian newspaper Il Messaggero that a woman seated in the row behind him was assessed by medics because she had 'a fear of flying' and was 'apprehensive'.

He said the plane departed 10 minutes behind schedule, but nothing was out of the ordinary until it flew over the Alps, turned around and began to descend.

Passengers didn't know what was happening until they landed in Venice and the captain made an announcement over the tannoy.

Mr Bartolini, as quoted by The Local, told Il Messaggero: 'The captain, speaking in English, told us that two people, a member of the crew and a passenger, had been taken ill and that was why he had decided to stop at Venice.'

Passengers disembarked and waited inside the terminal while the ill passenger and flight attendant were checked over.

Germanwings told MailOnline Travel that the flight attendant was unable to reboard, so a replacement aircraft with an additional crew member had to be flown to Venice to pick up the passengers.

Once the plane arrived they continued their journey to Rome, where the flight landed about five hours late at Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport.

In a statement, Germanwings told MailOnline Travel: 'The reason [for the unscheduled landing] was that one passenger and one flight attendant had to go into medical treatment due to acute feeling of sickness.

'A replacing plane coming from Hamburg [transported] the passengers to Rome. Due to one crew member less a continuation of flight 4U3882 is not possible since according to legal regularities an Airbus A319 always needs three crew members.'

Germanwings was a little-known subsidiary of Lufthansa until flight 4U9525 crashed into the French Alps while flying from Barcelona to Dusseldorf on 24 March.

Investigators believe 27-year-old co-pilot Andreas Lubitz deliberately crashed the Airbus A320 after locking the captain out of the cockpit.

Data from the second black box recorder found that Lubitz used the automatic pilot to put the plane into a descent and accelerated the doomed airliner into the mountain. 










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