British Airways BA2672 to Palma Turns Back Over France After a Reported Landing Gear Fault and Emergency

British Airways flight BA2672 from London Gatwick to Palma de Mallorca turned back over France on Sunday, November 1, 2026, and returned to Gatwick. AIRLIVE reported that the crew of the A320, registered G-EUYW, declared an emergency after a landing gear control failure.

AeroCorner found no public statement on the flight from British Airways or Gatwick Airport at the time of writing. The return itself is on the tracking record, but the fault and the emergency rest on that one report and a Spanish report that tells the same story.

What happened on BA2672

Flightradar24’s history for the flight number lists G-EUYW on the November 1 sector, scheduled out at 4:10 p.m. GMT, and marks it as diverted to London Gatwick. FlightStats shows the same tail and says the flight was operated by BA Euroflyer on behalf of British Airways.

The trackers differ on the departure time: FlightStats and AIRLIVE give 4:00 p.m., and Flightradar24 gives 4:23 p.m. The aircraft had already flown Gatwick to Preveza, Greece, and back that day, landing at 2:27 p.m. GMT, according to its Flightradar24 record.

According to AIRLIVE, the jet had reached 37,000 feet in French airspace when the crew was alerted to a failure in the Landing Gear Control system. The outlet puts the crew’s assessment at roughly an hour into the flight and the U-turn over central France.

AIRLIVE also says the crew set squawk 7700, the transponder code for a general emergency, to get priority handling and a direct route back. It expected a landing at about 6:05 p.m. GMT with emergency crews standing by as a precaution.

Its page, last updated at 6:13 p.m. GMT, says the aircraft landed safely on runway 08R and then parked on a remote stand. Neither report mentions injuries, and neither gives the number of people on board.

Why a gear control fault can send a jet home

The reason the reports give for going back is about repairs. AIRLIVE says the fault could not be fixed by maintenance teams at Palma, so the crew returned to the flight’s origin for maintenance support, and Marca reported the same reasoning.

That explanation comes from the reports, not the airline. It would fit an aircraft that could still fly safely but might have been stranded at its destination, though nobody has said so on the record.

A reported control fault does not by itself mean gear that will not come down. The Airbus A320 carries two landing gear control and interface units, known as LGCIU 1 and LGCIU 2, and neither report says whether either was involved here.

A 2016 Wizz Air case shows what the backup looks like. According to a summary published by France’s BEA, an A320 crew at Riga received a fault caution for both units, broke off the approach and could not clear it by recycling the gear lever.

That crew then ran the gravity gear extension checklist, got three green gear indications and landed uneventfully at their planned destination. The summary rests on preliminary data, and that event may have little in common with whatever happened on BA2672.

Not the July runway closure at Gatwick

Searches for this flight also surface a separate event on the same route. On July 15, 2026, a technical issue with a British Airways flight from Majorca closed the runway at Gatwick just after midnight, and Travel Weekly reported that 14 flights were diverted or had to circle.

The Sunday Guardian identified that flight as BA2673, the return sector from Palma, and reported nine aircraft squawking 7700. Nothing in the November 1 reporting mentions a runway closure or knock-on diversions, and nothing connects the two events.

BA2672 came 19 days after another British Airways departure from Gatwick turned back. On October 13, BA2660 to Faro returned over a reported cracked window, and the airline described that as a minor technical issue.