Transatlantic passengers heading for Miami had a 4-hour flight to nowhere, ending up back in Zurich
Passengers expecting to travel transatlantic ended up on a four-hour flight-to-nowhere.
Swiss International Airlines Flight 64 on Monday was supposed to be a 10-hour journey from Zurich to Miami.
Passengers were already in for some disruption as it departed around an hour later than scheduled, per data from Flightradar24.
Things went smoothly until an hour and a half into the journey, when the Airbus A340 started to turn around.
The plane had not long started flying over the Atlantic Ocean before deciding to head back.
It appeared to be going toward Switzerland, then turned toward Spain, before returning to its original path.
After three hours in the air, the A340 was back in Swiss airspace. However, it then had to circle around Zurich a few times before it could land.
An airline spokesperson told Business Insider that the plane returned due to "an irregularity with an engine."
The four-engined plane involved in the incident, HB-JMH, is 21 years old.
"As a precautionary measure, the crew decided to return to the home airport in Zurich, where we have the best maintenance facilities," they added.
This is often the case in so-called flights to nowhere, where returning to a hub airport also makes it easier to re-route passengers. Those on the Swiss flight were rebooked on the fastest possible alternatives.
"We regret the inconvenience caused to our passengers," the airline spokesperson said.
Similar incidents have seen flights as long as 10 hours before returning to their original take-off point.
For example, last November, a British Airways flight U-turned when it was halfway across the Atlantic.
And after a plane crash at Toronto Airport in February, two transatlantic flights to nowhere were among dozens of planes that diverted.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Government officials make massive Cybertruck purchase ahead of 2026 World Cup: 'Need to work a lot on the perception of security'
Just when you thought Tesla couldn't go any further into the mainstream, the Mexican State of Jalisco recently purchased 678 new patrol vehicles, and a few of them are Cybertrucks. The Tesla Cybertruck launched back in 2023 and has yet to stop intriguing consumers. Its aesthetic stands out on the road for its sharp shape and imposing size. According to Teslarati, Jalisco is implementing the truck into its increased police fleet as the 2026 FIFA World Cup approaches, bringing in an expected five million visitors. On the decision to implement the Cybertrucks, Jalisco Governor Pablo Lemus Navarro said, "We also need to work a lot on the perception of security," per Teslarati. The use of Cybertrucks by law enforcement is slowly becoming a reality. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department recently announced its plan to add 10 of the trucks to its police fleet, which were given to the department by donors. Furthermore, Business Insider reported that when U.S. President Donald Trump visited Qatar in May, two Cybertrucks were a part of his motorcade through Doha. Teslarati stated that the Cybertrucks "symbolize a fusion of cutting-edge technology and strategic security planning" and that their patrols ahead of the tournament "could set a new standard for security at international events, blending sustainability with strength." Electric vehicles are increasingly popular amongst the public, too, with the Cybertruck being the fifth most popular EV in 2024, per Cox Automotive. While Tesla saw its numbers dwindle earlier in 2025, in large part due to CEO Elon Musk's political activity, the EV market in general continues to rise. While the Inflation Reduction Act offers tax incentives on electric vehicles, the Trump Administration has mentioned cutting it, so the time is now to switch to an EV. To get maximum benefits, both money-saving and Earth-protecting, you can also integrate solar panels into your EV operation. Charging at home with power from solar panels is cheaper than using public charging stations, and with EnergySage, it's easy and free to compare quotes from vetted local installers and save up to $10,000 on installations. Would you ever consider buying a Tesla Cybertruck? Absolutely Never in a million years Maybe if it was way cheaper I already have one Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
A healthcare giant is using AI to sift through millions of transactions. It's saved employees 15,000 hours a month.
Omega Healthcare partnered with UiPath to automate medical billing and other administrative tasks. The revenue cycle management company has saved employees hours with its AI document-processing tool. This article is part of "CXO AI Playbook" — straight talk from business leaders on how they're testing and using AI. For "CXO AI Playbook," Business Insider takes a look at mini case studies about AI adoption across industries, company sizes, and technology DNA. We've asked each of the featured companies to tell us about the problems they're trying to solve with AI, who's making these decisions internally, and their vision for using AI in the future. Omega Healthcare Management Services is a revenue cycle management company that helps more than 350 healthcare organizations, including providers, payers, and pharmaceutical companies, manage their financial operations. This includes medical billing, insurance eligibility verification, collections, clinical documentation, and other administrative tasks. The company, which was founded in 2003, is headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida. It also has teams in India, Colombia, and the Philippines. Omega Healthcare has more than 30,000 employees who perform a high volume of administrative tasks, including medical billing and insurance claim submissions, for healthcare organizations. Every year, they process about 250 million digital transactions. These tasks have traditionally been done manually. Rajusiva Arunachalam, the company's vice president of technology, said that the administrative tasks are mundane, repetitive, and time-consuming. "We have a lot of humans working in the background for these doctors and providers who help them do their non-clinical work," he said. Arunachalam said Omega Healthcare wanted to automate billing, insurance claims, and other administrative tasks to free up employees to handle decision-making aspects, such as when to deny claims or follow up on a late payment. The goal was to improve its operations and help its clients increase collections, minimize incorrect claim submissions and denial rates, reduce receivable payment times, and enhance patient engagement. Omega Healthcare partnered with UiPath, an enterprise automation and AI software company, about five years ago to automate some of the workers' manual administrative tasks, including billing, medical coding, and correspondence with insurance companies. Arunachalam said UiPath's platform was a good fit for Omega Healthcare's strategy, which focuses on boosting automation and speeding up the completion of clients' administrative tasks. Arunachalam said Omega Healthcare created an internal team made up of developers, business analysts, and data scientists. The group focused on finding opportunities to automate repetitive tasks to save employees' time while speeding up work for clients. Omega Healthare uses UiPath Document Understanding, an AI tool that automatically pulls data from various client documents, such as accounts receivable correspondence, insurance denial letters, or electronic medical records. Arunachalam said the AI tool extracts data from these documents based on what a healthcare institution is trying to accomplish. For example, if the task is to file an insurance claim, the AI tool may pull out relevant data from electronic medical records. Or, if a claim was denied, it may identify relevant data from a denial letter or transcript of a call about the case. Arunachalam said human staff members review the data extracted by AI and use it to make decisions. For instance, they may decide that a claim was denied incorrectly due to a medical coding problem or based on information from a medical record. Staff can also use the tool to follow up with a healthcare company for more information on a billing error. Employees then send their decision to the client. "Human work is now more knowledge-based, very decision-oriented," which AI technology can't do, Arunachalam said. But humans and AI "work together in conjunction to achieve what the client needs." AI "can run 24 hours," Arunachalam said. It can also process data much faster, so fewer employees are needed for this work, which is more cost-effective for clients. Arunachalam added that Omega Healthcare has automated its administrative tasks, such as submitting insurance claims and medical billing, for about 60% to 70% of its clients. Since 2020, Omega Healthcare has processed more than 100 million transactions using UiPath automations, Arunachalam said. Omega Healthcare tracked the time it took employees to manually complete different administrative tasks and compared it to the time they spent on them after adding UiPath's tool to measure the tech's impact. Arunachalam said the company found that automation was saving employees more than 15,000 hours a month. Arunachalam said Omega Healthcare has also reduced the amount of time workers spend on documentation tasks by 40%. He added that automation has also slashed document processing turnaround time by 50% with a process accuracy of 99.5%. The company told BI that these improvements have increased efficiency and cost savings for Omega Healthcare's clients, delivering a 30% return on investment since using the AI-powered automation. Arunachalam said Omega Healthcare is working on automating more of its client work, including payment posting and patient appointment scheduling. Read the original article on Business Insider Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Yahoo
How Digital Realty is upgrading its data centers for AI — and trying to stay green
This article is part of "Build IT: Connectivity," a series about tech powering better business. Digital Realty, a data center operator, is scaling up its infrastructure to keep up with AI's growth. But the tricky part is to do so in an environmentally friendly way. The International Energy Agency found that in 2024, data centers accounted for 1.5% of global electricity use. By 2030, that number could nearly double, reaching levels just above Japan's current annual energy consumption. In addition, AI infrastructure is cooled with enormous amounts of water. A report from the University of Tulsa found that a single facility can use up to 5 million gallons per day, enough to supply thousands of homes. With governments and companies pouring billions into AI infrastructure, those resource demands are only expected to grow. Through close collaboration between its sustainability, engineering, and design teams, Digital Realty, which operates more than 300 data centers worldwide, is working to reduce carbon emissions. That means sourcing more renewable energy, upgrading cooling systems, and rethinking where — and how — new sites are built from the ground up. To understand how Digital Realty is preparing for that future, Business Insider spoke with Aaron Binkley, vice president of sustainability, and Shea McKeon, global head of design and engineering, about the company's sustainability strategy. In a roundtable conversation, Binkley and McKeon shared how their teams are working together to cut emissions, balance business demands with sustainability goals, and stay ahead of AI trends in the data center world. The following has been edited for length and clarity. Business Insider: How do your roles and teams at Digital Realty contribute to the company's overall decarbonization strategy? Aaron Binkley: My role is global. I oversee sustainability efforts across the company, including work around renewables, decarbonization, development and construction, operations of in-service data centers, and collaboration on green finance, clean energy, energy performance, water, and more. A big part of my job is acting as a convener, bringing people together to ensure we're working collaboratively and surfacing the best ideas. Shea McKeon: I sit in the design, engineering, and construction department, which oversees all new developments and major renovation projects around the world. We're responsible for integrating sustainability into our new builds and working with operations and energy management to bring existing facilities up to the latest standards. Digital Realty has ambitious targets to cut direct and indirect emissions per square foot by 60% and supply chain emissions by 24% — each by 2030. How are your teams collaborating to hit those goals? Binkley: We think about how we build, power, and operate sustainable data centers. That starts with understanding emissions across the data center lifecycle. Design and construction impact embodied carbon, or the total amount of emissions associated with the data center lifecycle, from metal extraction to construction, all the way to equipment disposal. Operationally, it's all about electricity use. So we work closely with our energy procurement and strategy teams to decarbonize our electricity supply. For Scope 1 emissions, referring to direct emissions from sources owned by our company, we're switching from burning mainly diesel in backup generators to renewable fuels like hydrotreated vegetable oil, a diesel-like fuel which we've deployed across 17% of our operating portfolio. But 98% of our Scope 1 and 2 emissions, which include the indirect emissions from purchased energy, come from electricity, so that's the big nut we need to crack. We prioritize opportunities based on where we can make the biggest impact, designing efficient facilities and powering them with renewables. McKeon: I'd say on the Scope 3 emissions side, which are indirect emissions from the data center supply chain, that's where my team can really have an impact. We're constantly working with our design and construction partners to make sure we're specifying the right materials to help bring those emissions down. It's always at the forefront of our designs. We also partner with Aaron's team during our annual business reviews with key suppliers. We just wrapped those up recently, and Scope 3 emissions were one of the topics we discussed — how suppliers are performing and what we can do to improve. It's a never-ending, iterative process, but collaboration is key to making progress. AI models are creating a demand for computing power. How are you balancing this growth with your sustainability targets? Binkley: We've seen AI coming. It's front of mind now, and a significant portion of our bookings are AI-related. Even as our portfolio grows, we haven't pulled back on any sustainability commitments. We've made strong progress on sourcing renewables and decarbonization. We plan for that, and as AI pushes greater demand, we adjust our plans: rethink sourcing, get more integrated with acquisitions, and get involved earlier in planning and design. We're even part of early utility conversations when acquiring land, asking for clean energy solutions before we've started moving dirt. We're also using AI internally to improve energy and water efficiency. We developed an in-house program called Apollo AI to optimize building management systems across our portfolio. The platform helps our facility engineers find hidden anomalies like clogged filters and leaky valves and suggests improvements that can help drive energy savings. We also have AI tools focused on water systems, helping us fine-tune cooling performance and water chemistry to reduce waste. We really try to squeeze every last drop of productivity out of the energy and water we consume. McKeon: We're planning for 100% of our future buildings to have the capability to deploy liquid cooling directly to the chip, where coolant is circulated through metal plates attached to graphics processing units to remove heat. For those that don't, our engineering team is building roadmaps so we're ready if customers want to use energy-intensive technologies like generative AI that require high levels of compute power. Our modular design approach helps us learn and adapt quickly. And with liquid cooling, you don't need as much square footage per megawatt anymore. That's going to change how buildings are designed moving forward. What's the biggest challenge in aligning technical engineering demands and sustainability goals? Binkley: Our sustainability standards are part of our building codes, but the maximum amount of emissions that can be reduced in our facilities still varies based on customer usage. Some customers move into the data centers fully and operate at high intensity; others ramp up slowly. Modularity helps us handle those variations. The speed of growth is also a challenge — we need to stay ahead of customer demand, line up renewables, and anticipate equipment needs that take a long time to procure. We're building physical infrastructure, which takes years. You can't just flip a switch. McKeon: We're a multi-tenant facility. We lease out space to our customers, so while we control the infrastructure, the customer ultimately controls how they operate within that space. We can design proactively with energy efficiency in mind, and we encourage best practices like airflow containment and optimal temperature settings. But at the end of the day, we don't dictate how customers use their equipment. That creates a bit of a disconnect. Our engineering team can build in sustainability features, but our operations team has to be reactive depending on how each tenant deploys. Some customers come in and run at high utilization, which is great from an efficiency standpoint. Others move in slowly or use a mix of equipment that can affect how well the facility runs. So there's a line between what we can control and what we can influence. Luckily, our operations team is very sophisticated. They use automation, data, and AI to adapt in real time, dialing in temperature and managing airflow, all to run as efficiently as possible. Looking ahead, how are you evolving your decarbonization strategy over the next few years? Binkley: We're not pulling back on our commitments. We'll stay the course, and perhaps even get more aggressive. Clean energy is harder to source now, but still available. We've been able to secure renewables that offer real value and reduce costs. We're also going deeper into Scope 3 with our supplier engagement program, working with vendors to reduce the carbon footprint of the materials and products we buy. McKeon: I'd echo that. Sustainability is embedded in our design process. It's not just a benchmark — it's part of our culture. Our local teams are empowered to innovate project by project, and our global teams constantly share best practices. What works in France might be relevant in Chicago. It's a contagious, exciting environment to be in. Read the original article on Business Insider Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
