Stranded in Turkey for 40 hours, 250 Indian passengers await return
Flyers on London-Mumbai Virgin Atlantic flight stuck in Turkey as airline scrambles to fix aircraft issues and arrange onward travel after emergency landing
A Virgin Atlantic flight from London to Mumbai has left over 250 passengers stranded in Turkey airport for more than 40 hours, following an emergency medical diversion and subsequent technical snag.
Flight VS358, which departed from Heathrow on April 2 and was scheduled to land in Mumbai on April 3, made an unplanned landing at Diyarbakir Airport in southeastern Turkey after a medical emergency on board.
Following the emergency landing—described by Virgin Atlantic as a 'hard landing'—the aircraft was declared unfit to fly due to a technical issue.
While crew members were escorted to hotels, passengers—many of them Indian nationals—were left confined in a small regional terminal with minimal facilities.
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Lack of basics
Stranded flyers took to social media to detail their ordeal. Reports cited only one working toilet for the entire group, insufficient food and water, and freezing temperatures without blankets.
Many passengers also lacked charging points or adapters, adding to the distress.
“There are babies, pregnant women, senior citizens, and diabetics among us. No updates, no representatives, and no help,” one passenger wrote online.
Visuals circulating on social media show exhausted passengers resting on airport benches, clearly distressed by the prolonged delay and uncertainty.
The situation was worsened by the limited infrastructure at Diyarbakir Airport, a small military facility unequipped to handle commercial disruptions of this scale.
Several flyers took to X to express frustration over the airport staff’s limited English proficiency and allegedly unhelpful or rude behaviour.
Passengers claimed that Virgin Atlantic offered reimbursement if they arranged their own travel to Istanbul—nearly 1,400 kilometres away—for a connecting flight to Mumbai.
However, with no direct commercial flights from Diyarbakir to India, alternate travel options remain scarce.
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Embassy responds
Virgin Atlantic later issued a statement confirming passengers had been moved to nearby hotels while the aircraft undergoes inspection.
The airlines also said that was working on a solution to set the passengers on their journey to Mumbai by "tomorrow".
The Indian Embassy in Ankara stated it is in constant touch with Virgin Atlantic Airlines, Diyarbakir Airport Directorate, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Turkiye.
“Appropriate care is being extended to the passengers, and discussions are underway to resolve the issue swiftly,” the Embassy said in a statement on X.