Update | Cathay Pacific picks up passengers stranded in Alaska after emergency landing of Los Angeles-bound flight

A Cathay Pacific relief flight flew to Alaska to pick up 276 passengers and 18 crew members and continue their journey to Los Angeles after their original airliner was forced to make an emergency landing.

The airline said the “precautionary diversion” was made after smoke was detected on flight CX884, which departed from Hong Kong at 12.55pm yesterday and touched down at the Eareckson Air Station on the Shemya US military base on the Aleutian Islands at about 9.30pm last night (Hong Kong time).

Cathay Pacific said today that a problem with a cooling fan created smoke, which led to the emergency landing.

The airline tweeted that a “preliminary inspection indicates that an equipment cooling fan below the cabin floor near the cargo compartment had failed,” so there was smoke in the cockpit, and the captain decided to make an emergency landing. 

The five-year-old Boeing 777-300ER aircraft, registration B-KPQ, has left the remote air base with the passengers and crew and was heading to Anchorage in Alaska, where they would board the relief flight, operating as CX884D, which would fly them to Los Angeles, Cathay said.

No injuries were reported.