United passengers faced an 8-hour flight to nowhere when their plane U-turned midway across the Atlantic

• A United Airlines plane made a U-turn over the mid-Atlantic and returned to New York on Monday.
• The flight from Newark to Cape Town turned back after a medical issue, United told Business Insider.
• 236 passengers and 14 crew were in the air for over eight hours before landing back in Newark.

Passengers on a United Airlines flight from Newark to South Africa faced an unexpected ordeal when the plane turned back over the Atlantic Ocean.

United Flight 1122 departed Newark Liberty International Airport on Sunday evening at 8:32 p.m. local time, bound for Cape Town, according to flight-tracking data from Flightradar24 and FlightAware.

However, instead of completing its nearly 8,000-mile journey, the Boeing 787-9 got four hours into the flight and roughly a quarter of the way to Cape Town when it made a U-turn mid-Atlantic and flew back another four hours to the US.

The Dreamliner, tail number N24988, landed safely at Newark around 5:03 a.m. Monday, roughly eight and a half hours after takeoff.

A United Airlines spokesperson told Business Insider the plane returned "to address a medical issue with a customer."

"The flight was met by medical personnel on arrival," the spokesperson said. "Customers were rebooked and will be on their way today."

236 passengers and 14 crew members were on board at the time of the incident.

The Newark-Cape Town route is one of United's longest, typically taking nearly 14 hours nonstop.

For travelers expecting a sunrise over South Africa, the turnaround meant they instead saw the New York skyline again before breakfast.

United has since rescheduled the service for Monday evening, giving passengers another shot at making the 7,800-mile trek — hopefully this time, all the way to Cape Town.