United Airlines flight to Rome plunges 28,000ft in ten minutes after ‘cabin pressure drop’ forcing it to divert back to New Jersey

A United Airlines flight to Rome carrying nearly 300 people plunged more than 28,000 ft in just ten minutes because of a drop in cabin pressure. 

Flight data revealed that UAL510, a Boeing 777 travelling from Newark Liberty International Airport to Rome-Fiumicino International Airport, went from an altitude of 37,000 ft to 8,700 ft in just ten minutes on Wednesday night. 

The plane circled twice over Nova Scotia, Canada, at a stable altitude at around 10:30pm before it flew back home. 

The plane, which was carrying 270 passengers and 14 crew members, flew back to Newark to ‘address a possible loss of cabin pressure’, a United Airlines spokesperson said. 

‘The flight landed safely and there was never any loss of cabin pressure,’ the spokesperson said.

Flight data revealed the plane circled over Nova Scotia twice before coming back to Newark

The Federal Aviation Administration, the body in charge of regulating flights in the US, also said the plane experienced a ‘pressurization issue,’ prompting it to reverse course. 

United Airlines said that the travellers on the plane were eventually flown to Italy on another airplane.  

The in-air chaos comes as US airlines have slammed the FAA for not employing enough staff, leading to hundreds of delayed or cancelled flights during a record-setting travel season. 

Airlines have faced flight woes after a record setting US summer travel season and voluntary cut flights because of air traffic shortages. 

They want to add more flights to address demand, and top executives at airlines have slammed the FAA for not doing enough to help them meet this demand. 

‘In the short to medium term we have to reduce flights in very impacted airports because the system can’t cope with the number of flights today,’ JetBlue Airways CEO Robin Hayes said at an industry conference on Tuesday. 

‘We’re selling flights that we know we won’t be able to operate because of ATC challenges,’ he added. 

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby, who harshly criticized the FAA this summer, said at the conference that lagging air traffic staffing levels ‘was two decades in building and it is going to take years to get it addressed.’ 

In July, commercial airlines racked up 46 ‘close calls’ between aircrafts according to the FAA.

Some of the near misses include one on July 2 when a Southwest Airlines flight landing at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport came just seconds from hitting a Delta plane that was preparing to take off from the same runway.

In San Francisco, two planes that were taking off nearly crashed into a Frontier Airlines plane which had just landed and was waiting to cross the runway.

Another incident near Minden, Louisiana between an American Airlines and United Airlines planes caused the American pilot, flying at more than 500mph, to yank the aircraft up 700 feet to avoid collision.