Passengers flying to Paris spent 21 hours stranded in the remote nation of Turkmenistan before a spare plane came to rescue them

• An Air France flight from India to Paris diverted to Turkmenistan.
• It was already running almost a whole day late before it departed.
• After 21 hours in Ashgabat, a spare plane took the passengers on to France.

Air France passengers were delayed by nearly two days after they were diverted to Turkmenistan.

Monday's Flight 191 was already running 21 hours late when it departed Bengaluru, India, shortly after 11 p.m., according to data from Flightradar24. It was supposed to land in Paris about 10 hours later.

However, four hours into the journey, the Boeing 777 started descending. It made a U-turn to land in Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan, a sparsely populated nation in Central Asia.

Registered as F-GSPI, the jet is 26 years old. The cause of the diversion has not been confirmed, though The Independent reported that the plane suffered an engine issue.

Passengers then had to wait nearly another whole day to continue their journey to Paris. Turkmenistan is ruled by what Human Rights Watch has described as a totalitarian, hereditary government and is one of the world's most politically secluded countries.

Air France did not respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider.

Given that the flight departed from India, there were a number of Indian nationals on board, who were hosted by the nation's consulate in Turkmenistan. It is unclear where the majority of the passengers on the flight stayed during their time in Ashgabat.

Ultimately, a new aircraft was dispatched to collect the passengers. Flight-tracking data shows another Air France Boeing 777 left Paris on Tuesday morning and arrived in Ashgabat after a five-hour flight.

It spent about three hours on the ground before departing Turkmenistan shortly after 1 a.m. That's nearly 22 hours after the passengers first arrived there.

The plane then landed in the French capital at 3:23 a.m. on Wednesday. Along with the departure delay, that's 43 hours later than passengers initially expected to get there.

Flight-tracking data appears to show that the original plane is still on the ground in Ashgabat as of Thursday morning, three days after it landed there.

This wasn't the first time that Air France has sent a plane to rescue stranded passengers.

In May 2024, one of its Boeing 787s was flying from Paris to Seattle when a burning smell was detected in the cabin.

The pilots declared an emergency and diverted to Iqaluit, the capital of Canada's Nunavut territory. A different flight was canceled so a Boeing 777 could take the passengers to New York.