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San Francisco-bound flight forced to turn back due to ‘maintenance issue’

A plane hovers above an airport runway.
United Flight 830 safely returned to Sydney, Australia, on Monday with 167 passengers and 16 crew members aboard. | Source: Yichuan Cao/NurPhoto/Getty Images

A United Airlines jet headed for San Francisco on Monday was forced to turn back mid-flight due to an undisclosed maintenance issue.

United Flight 830 safely returned to Sydney, Australia, on Monday with 167 passengers and 16 crew members aboard. The Boeing 777-322 plane, described in a FlightRadar24 website listing for the flight, had been scheduled for takeoff at 12:10 p.m. local time before taking off at 12:31 p.m.

The company declined to elaborate on what caused the failure. FlightAware, a website that tracks airplanes, says the flight was in the air for two hours and 33 minutes before landing back in Sydney.

“The plane landed safely and passengers deplaned normally at the gate,” United wrote in a statement. “We provided accommodation overnight for passengers and rebooked them to San Francisco.”

The mishap marks the seventh time a United flight has turned around, made an emergency landing or faced some kind of equipment failure in the last week, according to media reports.

David Sjostedt can be reached at david@sfstandard.com