A Virgin Atlantic flight to New York was canceled moments before takeoff last week when a worried passenger said he saw several screws missing from the plane’s wing.
British traveler Phil Hardy, 41, was on board Flight VS127 at Manchester Airport in the UK on January 15 when he noticed four fasteners missing during a safety briefing for passengers and decided to alert the cabin crew.
“I’m a good flyer, but my partner didn’t like the information I told him and started panicking, and I tried to calm him down as much as I could,” Hardy told Kennedy News agency about the moment he spotted the missing fasteners.
“I thought it would be best to mention it to a flight attendant to be on the safe side.”
Engineers were immediately called to carry out a maintenance check on the Airbus A330 before its scheduled departure to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, a Virgin Atlantic representative said.
A passenger on a Virgin Atlantic flight at Manchester Airport in the UK said he noticed four fasteners were missing when he looked out his window. Kennedy News & Media
Footage captured by Hardy shows one of the engineers climbing up the wing of the plane before using a screwdriver to massage some fasteners.
Hardy said airline personnel repeatedly assured him there were no safety issues with the wing, but his fears grew following a recent ordeal in which an Alaska Airlines plane lost its door plugs and part of its fuselage flew off mid-flight.
Both Virgin and Airbus insisted there was no impact on the safety of the plane last week despite the missing equipment.
Engineers were immediately called to perform a maintenance check on the Airbus A330 aircraft before its scheduled departure to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. Kennedy News & Media Virgin and the plane’s maker, Airbus, both insisted there was no impact on the plane’s safety despite the missing equipment. Kennedy News & Media footage shot by Hardy shows one of the engineers climbing onto the plane’s wing and using a screwdriver to loosen some fasteners. Kennedy News & Media
A Virgin representative said the flight was ultimately grounded to “provide time for additional precautionary engineering maintenance checks, allowing our teams maximum time to complete their checks.
“The safety of our customers and crew is always our top priority and this is not compromised at any time,” the representative said in the statement. “We have always worked well above industry safety standards and the aircraft is now back in service.”
Neil Firth, Airbus’ local chief wing engineer for the A330, added that the affected panels were secondary structures used to improve the aircraft’s aerodynamics.
Phil Hardy, 41, and his partner, Magdalena Bobusia, 46, finally made it to the Big Apple after being rebooked on another flight. Kennedy News & Media
“Each of these panels has 119 fasteners, so there is no impact on the structural integrity or load capacity of the wing, and the aircraft is safe to operate,” he said.
“As a precaution, the aircraft underwent additional maintenance checks, and fasteners were replaced.”
Passengers were rebooked on alternate flights to the Big Apple.
“We would like to apologize to our customers for the delay in their journeys,” a Virgin representative said.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
