Toronto flight forced to land 3,000 km away after emergency on board

A Toronto-bound flight was forced to cut its roughly 12-hour journey short last week after a passenger suffered a medical emergency on board. 

On Sept. 15, a long-haul Air Canada flight departed from Tokyo's Haneda Airport at 6:13 p.m. and was headed for Toronto Pearson International Airport. The daily flight is usually scheduled to take off around 6:10 p.m. in Japan and land in Toronto at 5:35 p.m. local time, though things didn't quite go to plan this time around.

While flying over Canada, the crew was forced to divert to Yellowknife Airport after a medical emergency took place on board the aircraft. The flight landed safely in Yellowknife roughly nine hours after taking off from Haneda Airport at 12:03 p.m. local time. 

Flight radar shows the aircraft diverting from its normal route, which usually takes it over Vancouver, to land in Yellowknife. 

Source: FlightAware.com.

In a statement to blogTO, Air Canada confirmed that the diversion was due to a medical emergency.

"The aircraft was not affected, it landed and later took off again normally," the airline said. 

Approximately two hours later, at 2:14 p.m., the aircraft departed Yellowknife and finally landed in Toronto at 7:58 p.m., local time, roughly two and a half hours later than it was initially scheduled to arrive.