10 seconds. That’s all it took to ruin the night for passengers on this Airbus A321.
The flight was seconds from landing when it got bounced – straight to another airport, hours away.
What followed was a blur of buses, overnight chaos, and one final insult: their plane made it to Munich before they did.
And yes, all of this came down to a midnight curfew and a very unforgiving clock.
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The Airbus A321 missed curfew by seconds
Condor Flight 1513 had already left Palma de Mallorca late – about 90 minutes behind schedule.
That meant a tight squeeze into Munich’s airport curfew, which had been extended to 12:30am to give the plane a shot at landing.
But in the end, it wasn’t enough. The plane crossed the threshold 10 seconds too late.
Because of strict local noise laws, air traffic control waved it off and rerouted it to Hahn Airport, over 230mi away.
The plane touched down at Hahn just after 1:00am. Passengers weren’t offloaded until 1:13am, and the buses didn’t leave until nearly 3:00am.
To add insult to injury, their original plane, once emptied, turned around and flew back to Munich, landing at 5:47am. The passengers? They didn’t make it to Munich until around 8:00am.
Why this could become a bigger airline headache
What’s triggered outrage here isn’t just the reroute – it’s the planning behind it.
Critics say the airline knew it was cutting it fine with the curfew and should have cancelled the flight altogether, providing accommodation for passengers and rebooking, instead of gambling on a midnight deadline.
It’s the kind of operational gamble that mirrors much bigger airline breakdowns, like Southwest’s infamous 2022 collapse, which ended in millions of dollars in refunds and new pressure on airline consumer laws.
That’s why this isn’t just about a single plane getting sent on an overnight road trip. It’s about whether airlines are doing enough to protect passengers when things don’t go as planned.
In this case, 10 seconds costs people eight hours and a whole lot of sleep.
Timing, it turns out, is everything.
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