CX 253 Milan Malpensa - London Heathrow (part 2)
9 Sep 2026
Premium Economy

This is the continuation of a Hong Kong - London flight that got diverted to Milan the previous night due to an air traffic control system outage in the UK that stopped arrivals into Heathrow and a number of British airports.

@ Milan airport hotel

Unfortunately, Cathay and hotel staff could not give an indication on how long we would need to stay in Milan and when we could continue onto London. This was understandable, since this crew had already been close to their maximum duty hours, Milan wasn't a big outport for the airline with just a single daily flight, and Heathrow wasn't taking anyone in.

Comfortably accommodated at the ibis near the airport, I only slept on and off for a few hours and kept my phone on loud mode to wake me up if a message comes through with an update. After 4 hours of sleep, I woke up nervously but there were no updates.

I would then sleep for a few more hours and got up at breakfast time. An email had arrived just shy of 6am Milan time explaining what happened and they're working on it.

Perhaps I'm spoiled by Asian hotel breakfasts. This ibis was serving a very basic selection with a few baked items, yogurt, and 4 hot options. The big plates were sticky and dirty so I fished around looking for something clean to eat on.

Given the circumstances, I made with what we've got. There aren't any shops or restaurants around the hotel given its location near the airport.

I also noticed a few other passeners from my flight eating, which was a bit of a relief in case the hotel forgot about me and everyone else had gone back to London!

After breakfast, I headed back to my room to browse the news and relax a bit. It was a standard ibis room but the size was pretty good with a lot of space, a big long desk along the window, and even a fancy coffee machine with a few pods, a feature I haven't seen at this chain elsewhere.

Even though the air conditioning stopped half way through the night and it was still a balmy 25C, the big window could fully open and helped cool the temperature down a bit.

As lunch approached, the phone in my room rang. Staff reminded me to go downstairs to grab a lunch voucher and did not have a further update on the flight. He also said I could continue to stay in my room and not need to worry about the check-out time.

Just shortly after noon, I received a second email from Cathay with an update. This time, there was a bit more information indicating they hope to fly to London later in the day.

I got a food voucher from reception and the staff told me to head across the street to the Novotel for lunch. That hotel looked a lot nicer than the ibis and their lobby restaurant opened at 12:30pm, although we got there much earlier than that and staff let us in before they officially opened.

There already was a big bottle of water and some bread at the table. We were given a set lunch fairly quickly with a chicken cutlet, potatoes in an herb and salt mix, and pasta with tomato sauce. Everything tasted decent, and my mood had gone up hoping that dinner would be in London tonight.

I finished lunch fairly quickly and walked back to the hotel just before a big thunderstorm rolled in. Shortly before 2pm, the hotel rang me up that pick-up would be at 2:45pm. I still hadn't received an email about the revised flight time at that point and the app had nothing new but was happy to start packing!

However, the pick-up ended up being an hour late as a single minibus had to go around picking up the area's passengers and needed to make multiple rounds. During the long wait, I got an email from Cathay indicating they've secured approval to operate the flight back to London, departing at 7:45pm and arriving exactly a day later than originally scheduled.

With pick-up at 2:45pm, it seemed quite early for an evening flight. But then, it's probably a big operation to get over 300 people spread across many hotels to the airport and they can't afford to have anyone come late.

By now, the rain had gone and it was even sunny!

Back to Milan Malpensa Terminal 1

The shuttle dropped us off very close to Cathay's check-in counters and there was a huge line waiting already. It appears the Economy passengers arrived even earlier than we did, but the check-in counters were processing premium cabin passengers first so they had to wait until we were done.

I got a new boarding pass showing the same flight number but a Milan to London itinerary, a rare item that I will keep to celebrate this special occasion. My bag was sent off and I still had about 3.5 hours to go before departure, so I went exploring.

There was a sidewalk at the end of the terminal that offered some views of the tarmac. I think the Cathay plane in the distance was the one I was on.

Inside, the terminal wasn't too busy. There was a long line of windows at the back with pretty good tarmac views as well. This airport gets some interesting visitors such as Turkemnistan!

On the departures board, my flight was at the top of the menu along with the Saudia flight also bound for London. Seems we're leftovers from the night before.

There was also an exhibition around the check-in area with lots of portrait photos on display. There were more upstairs around the small food court.

By the time I finished exploring and got back to the Cathay counters, the big line had pretty much cleared. So it's time to clear security.

Entering the air-side zone was a bit confusing. The scanners initially didn't work and I was told to head to the B area just a few steps down since my gate would be from the B area. However, the sign above showed the B area for US and Israel departures and those scanners didn't work either. The surly staff there then pointed me back to the A zone. Confused and not getting a straight answer from staff that clearly didn't want to be doing their job, I ended up figuring out to wait for the manual entry line in between these 2 staff. Why a proper boarding pass can't get through the scanner remains a mystery.

Once past, I ended up in the same security line as if I went through the scanners anyway.

With a lot of time on my hands, I browsed the duty-free shop looking for local products, such as limoncello, olive oil, truffle anything, cheese, and colourful pasta.

I was also looking for dinner as well. There was some selection available although they seem to repeat as I walked through the terminal. Mostly on offer are sandwiches and pizzas that looked decent.

Immigration to exit the EU didn't take long, although I was directed to the manual counter once again but the line wasn't long at all.

This section of the terminal was a lot quieter and quite big. Along the way to my gate, I saw a few sprinkles of interesting art here and there that caught my attention while plane spotting.

My flight would depart from a distant pier with lots of seats since the neighbouring gates weren't being used. A bit of a walk away are Royal Jordanian and Turkemnistan planes also boarding but the whole space was big enough for everyone to grab a seat and relax.

However, it was a bit of a zoo at the food market here, since a number of Mandarin-speaking passengers were trying to use their food vouchers but couldn't communicate what they wanted. I didn't get a voucher to use at the airport so I presume they were stuck there for the previous night because of visa issues? Staff primarily spoke Italian first but were able to communicate in English although that didn't really help as these passengers couldn't really speak English at all - even the younger one.

Back on board

Boarding was timely but it was a glob of people waiting at the gate for their zone to be called. It was nevertheless civil and everyone managed through the crowd orderly as the front of the plane boarded.

I was greeted by last night's crew and headed back to the same seat.

The plane had been cleaned up with a pillow at the seat but no more blanket. A fresh headset in a plastic bag was placed in the seat pocket.

I noticed the crew were helping older and less mobile passengers with their hand luggage and trying to find overhead space in the Business cabin as boarding entered the final stages. Boarding was completed at 7:52pm and we pushed back 10 minutes later. The same captain announced a flight time of 1h20 back to London.

I was delighted as we got airborne into the setting sun.

While I wasn't exepecting any catering for this short flight and given the circumstances, I was surprised the crew handed out bottles of water and some snacks (chocolates or cookies). It looked like they loaded some items from Milan as the labels were not from Hong Kong, which was a nice extra touch.

I then dozed off a bit and the next announcement came as we neared London with a holding delay.

To add a bit more drama to this ordeal, we had to abort landing just as we neared the runway and looped around south of the city for another attempt, coming in about 10 minutes later.

My inbound flight to Hong Kong also had an aborted landing so this would be the first time where this happened to both my flights on the same trip.

A less stellar welcome back to London

We landed safely on the second try at 9:15pm, almost 2 hours after we took off from Milan.

It was a long walk to immigration but the first signs of trouble came on the ramp towards the immigration hall for all other passports. There was a huge crowd and staff held us back to go in one small group at a time. I couldn't even see the counters at this point and worried this would be serious trouble. The kiosks for British passport holders and a small number of countries were clear.

The line stretched around the length of the huge immigration hall several times. I've never seen it this bad before although it moved steadily with a lot of manual counters open. Staff were passing out water part way as well and I ended up waiting over an hour to get processed. I suppose a lot of diverted planes were coming back today but noticed there were no more crowds coming in behind us, so perhaps we're the last big widebody to come in for the day?

By the time I was out, my bag was already rolling along the belt.

Final Thoughts ...

I'm still quite mad at the UK air traffic control problems that have regularly appeared in recent years. This shutdown was unprecedented, and I wondered just how is it possible a major international airport like Heathrow to stop all arrivals for a good part of the day. Surely, an important system should have built-in and tested resiliency measures and not go down so easily? Yet, their boss remains on the job time after time, while passengers pay a high fees to access an unreliable airspace.

Unfortunately, this is not something the airline or airport can fix.

Anger aside, Cathay managed this diversion and recovery fairly well, keeping us in the loop and providing decent accommodations quickly. Watching the people over in London stuck inside their planes for hours and sleeping at the airport, my ordeal was far more luxurious and dignified.

I did have a good stay in Milan and was very grateful they could find hotel rooms for so many of us on a full 777 despite many other diverted planes coming in earlier in the day. The ground staff in Milan were great and worked hard to get us settled quickly for the night. I'm very grateful for their hard work.

I did wonder why we didn't go to Frankfurt or Zurich though as they were a bit closer and given the earlier flight ended up diverting to Brussels. However, realizing the severity of the situation, it might not make sense for all these widebodies to crowd around the same alternate airports near London. I wouldn't have wanted to sleep on the airport floor that night.