Plane With US Personnel Onboard Forced To Land In Iran En Route From Afghanistan To Dubai

Update, 7 p.m. Friday:

"It ... has taken off," the official said of the Fly Dubai aircraft. The plane had exited Bagram airbase in Afghanistan a few hours late, yet it failed to update its flight plan, the official said, Reuters reported.

As a result, the official said, Iranian officials first asked it to turn around and to land when told it didn't possess enough fuel to return to Afghanistan.

In a statement, Fly Dubai confirmed that its charter "is now enroute to Dubai."

Original story:

A Boeing 737 chartered by Western coalition forces in Afghanistan and bound from Bagram, Afghanistan, to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates landed in Iran on Friday, after Iranian officials had questions about its flight plan and demanded that it land.

The Washington Post reported the news citing U.S. officials and said the plane, chartered from low-cost state-owned carrier FlyDubai, had about 100 people on board including U.S. and Canadian military personnel.

U.S. planes or planes from third-party nations full of U.S. citizens do not ordinarily land in Iran, which has had no diplomatic relations with the U.S. since 1979.

According to the officials cited by the Post, the plane landed in Bandar Abbas, on the Persian Gulf, after Iranian air traffic control got in touch with the flight crew demanding unspecified information about the flight plan. Air traffic control then demanded that the plane return to Bagram and file a new flight plan.

The crew then told air traffic control that they did not have enough fuel to return to Bagram, just outside Kabul, and authorities then asked that they land in Iran.

It is not clear whether there were Iranian fighter jets involved that intercepted the aircraft and forced it to land. If the pilots did not agree to land, they ran the risk of being “intercepted” by the Iranian military, according to CNN. Multiple sources indicated that Iranians informed the pilots they were stopped because the flight plan was “out of date.”

It is also not clear what route the Boeing was flying, but the most direct flight between Bagram and Dubai overflies Iranian territory. Unlike U.S. planes, aircraft registered in the United Arab Emirates, as all aircraft in FlyDubai’s fleet are, would ordinarily have no problem being authorized to overfly Iran.

According to the Washington Post, the plane “was expected to resume its flight quickly.” CNN's Jake Tapper tweeted, citing administration officials, that the incident would be over soon: