HONG KONG -- A Virgin Atlantic Airways flight landed 26 hours late in Hong Kong after being forced to land in Moscow due to a mix-up over whether it had permission to fly over the Russian capital, a spokeswoman for the airline has said.


The 271 passengers and crew on board were held on the tarmac for eight hours Friday before the Russian authorities allowed the plane to leave and return to London, a spokeswoman for Virgin said.


Some passengers expressed annoyance in London over their treatment at Sheremetyevo 2 Airport, before setting out on the second flight which arrived in Hong Kong on Saturday, avoiding Moscow airspace.


"They wouldn't let us off the plane because we didn't have visas,'' said British vacationer Robert Marshall. His wife, Susan Marshall, said, "They wouldn't bring anything on and they wouldn't let us off. We had a meal which was already on board, but we were just stuck there.''


"I thought the Cold War was over,'' Marshall said.


Arriving in Hong Kong, however, other passengers shrugged off their experience. "Nothing really happened, it was really calm," said a Hong Kong resident who declined to give his name.


The airline denied a British newspaper report that a Russian warplane had ordered the Airbus 340 out of the skies. It also denied local media reports that Virgin Atlantic had failed to file a proper flight plan.


The Russian authorities had confirmed a new, shorter routing was available, the Virgin statement said, and the airline filed a flight plan before flight VS200 left London on Thursday.


Four hours into the 12-hour flight, "the pilot was asked to divert to Moscow by Russian Air Traffic Control, which apparently had no knowledge of the officially sanctioned route," the Virgin statement said. (Reuters, AP)