Etihad EY22 From Toronto Diverts Its A380 to Amman for a Passenger Who Needed Urgent Medical Care

Etihad Airways flight EY22, an Airbus A380-800 flying from Toronto to Abu Dhabi, diverted to Amman, Jordan, early on Sunday, October 18, 2026. The airline said a passenger on board needed immediate medical treatment.

The jet spent about four hours on the ground at Queen Alia International Airport, then flew on to Abu Dhabi, arriving a little over three hours late.

What happened on EY22

Etihad posted a notice on its flight status page saying EY022 of October 17 “has diverted to Queen Alia International Airport (AMM) due to a guest on board requiring immediate medical treatment.” The airline apologized and said its teams were helping passengers with their travel arrangements.

Gulf News carried the same explanation. The first reports, including AIRLIVE’s, were based on flight-tracking data and said Etihad had not yet given a reason.

FlightAware data shows the A380 left the gate at Toronto Pearson at 2:09 p.m. EDT on Saturday, October 17, and took off at 2:31 p.m. The flight is scheduled at 13 hours 35 minutes, and Flightradar24’s history for the jet identifies it as A6-APJ.

FlightAware logged the diversion at 6:51 a.m. Amman time. The A380 was at 39,000 feet near the border between Lebanon and Syria, about 158 miles (254 km) north of Amman, and it began descending straight south within minutes.

Its tracked approach ended at Queen Alia at about 7:16 a.m. local time, roughly 9 hours 45 minutes after takeoff. It left Amman at 11:28 a.m. and landed in Abu Dhabi at 2:44 p.m. local time, according to Flightradar24.

FlightAware put its gate arrival 3 hours 3 minutes behind schedule. The same aircraft was back in service the next day, flying Abu Dhabi to Paris as EY31, per Flightradar24.

Why Amman

Amman sat almost on the flight’s path. On the previous day’s EY22, FlightAware’s track shows the A380 crossing Ireland, England, France and the Balkans, then Turkey and the eastern Mediterranean.

From there it turned southeast over Syria, eastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia before crossing the Gulf near Qatar to Abu Dhabi. The October 17 flight was on that same route when the crew turned south.

That made the trade-off stark. Amman was about 25 minutes away from the point where FlightAware logged the diversion, while the October 16 flight needed roughly two and a half more hours from the same stretch to reach Abu Dhabi.

Queen Alia International Airport also suits a jet this size. It has two parallel runways of 12,008 feet (3,660 m) and lies about 18 miles (30 km) south of the capital.

Amman is also on Etihad’s own network, which sells flights there from Abu Dhabi.

Crews weigh several factors before choosing where to land, from the patient’s needs to runway length and the ground support on offer. Our explainer on how flight diversions work walks through them.

The second EY22 medical diversion since July

This is not the first time EY22 has stopped short for a sick passenger this year. On July 10, 2026, another Etihad A380 on the same flight, A6-APD, diverted to Gander, Newfoundland, about four hours after leaving Toronto, AIRLIVE reported.

In that case, emergency medical personnel took the passenger to a regional hospital, and the jet continued to Abu Dhabi after about two hours on the ground, according to the same report.

It also follows a similar diversion by another Gulf carrier’s A380 earlier this month, when Emirates EK31 diverted to Frankfurt on its way from Dubai to London for a passenger’s medical emergency.

Medical calls in flight are common, but diversions for them are rare. A study in the New England Journal of Medicine counted one in-flight medical emergency per 604 flights across five airlines from 2008 to 2010, and the aircraft diverted in 7.3% of them.