Passengers on a British Airways flight from London tolerated an 11-hour trip when the aircraft was forced to return to where they started.

On Sunday, flight BA31 departed from Heathrow Airport on what is usually a standard journey to Hong Kong International Airport, when around four hours into the flight the Boeing 777-236 had to turn back around, AirLive reports.

The aircraft was flying over Central Asia when it experienced technical issues and decided to divert to London.

In a statement to PYOK, the airline said: “The flight returned to London Heathrow as a precaution due to a minor technical issue.

“It landed safely and customers disembarked as normal. We’ve apologised to our customers for the disruption to their journey.”

According to PYOK, the reason the airline did not fly to a closer airport was because it wanted to have its own maintenance team, who are based in London, repair the issue.

The next day flight BA31 departed Heathrow and again failed to reach Hong Kong - this time because a medical emergency occurred, AirLive reports.

Data on the online live flight tracker Flightradar24 revealed it diverted to Budapest three hours into the flight.

It comes at a time when Boeing is under legal hot water.

The US Justice Department is currently seeking a guilty plea for criminal charges against the aerospace company following two fatal crashes that killed 346 people, Reuters reports

The first deadly crash happened on October 29, 2018 when a plane departed from Jakarta, Indonesia, and the second occurred on March 10, 2019 when a flight took off from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Some of the families of the victims are seeking $40 billion in fines which, according to lawyer Paul Cassell, was justified “because Boeing’s crime is the deadliest corporate crime in US history,” AP reports.

“That staggering loss should be reflected in the sentence in this case - including in the fine.

“Indeed, it would almost be morally reprehensible if the criminal justice system was incapable of capturing the enormous human costs.”