- An Air France plane returned to Paris around 1 hour and 40 minutes after taking off from there.
- The airline said there was "a smell of hotness" in the cabin, and reports say it was uncomfortably hot.
- Passengers ultimately made it to their destination about six hours behind schedule.
Air France passengers faced a flight to nowhere after the cabin became too hot for comfort.
Flight 652 departed Paris about 6 p.m. local time on Friday. It was supposed to land in Réunion, a French island in the Indian Ocean, 10½ hours later.
However, data from Flightradar24 shows the Boeing 777 only made it as far as the Swiss Alps before turning around near Davos.
It landed back at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport 1 hour and 40 minutes after taking off from there.
In a statement shared with Business Insider, Air France said the plane returned out of precaution due to "a smell of hotness detected in the cabin."
Travel news site Paddle Your Own Kanoo reported that the cabin was too hot for passengers to be comfortable.
The Aviation Herald reported that the crew first declared PAN-PAN, the urgency signal, but then upgraded to Mayday after Swiss air traffic control advised that this was necessary to dump fuel over France before landing.
"Customers were taken care of by Air France teams at the airport and were able to depart on a new aircraft which took off at 00:13 a.m," the airline said.
That meant they landed in Réunion about six hours later than expected.
Meanwhile, the original Boeing 777 took off from Charles de Gaulle the following day, operating Saturday's Flight 652 without any apparent problems.
"The company regrets the inconveniences linked to this situation and recalls that the safety of customers and flights is an absolute imperative," Air France said.
