He noticed something strange on the plane’s wing and told his wife. They both panicked and communicated their concern to the crew. Minutes later, flight VS127 to New York was grounded. What did the passenger see?
The episode happened last week, before an Airbus 330 plane of the British airline Virgin Atlantic took off from Manchester (UK) for the United States. They were the English Phil Hardy41 years old, who noticed that something was wrong with one of the wings of the vehicle.
From inside the plane, and when the crew informed the passengers about the safety mechanisms of the flight, Hardy noticed that one of the wings was missing four “fasteners.”.
“Just to be safe,” he told a flight attendant, and she immediately called the engineers.
“I’m a good flyer, but my partner didn’t like the information I was telling her and she started to panic, and I was trying to calm her down as much as I could,” Hardy told Kennedy News.
The passenger noticed that there were 4 loose fasteners. Photo: Kennedy News & MediaFlight suspended
The engineers arrived immediately. They climbed onto the wing of the plane and checked with a screwdriver whether the fasteners were in order. And they were.
However, Hardy still wasn’t sure. I remembered that some time ago an Alaska Airlines plane had lost its door cap during the flight.
An airline representative said that although the details noted by the passenger had been looked into, the flight had to be suspended to “allow time to perform additional and preventative engineering maintenance checks, which gave our team maximum time to complete the inspections.”
“The safety of our customers and crew is always our top priority and this has not been compromised at any time. We always work well above industry safety standards and the aircraft is now back in service,” the representative emphasized in the notice.
An engineer immediately got to work. Photo: Kennedy News & MediaVirgin Atlantic eventually rescheduled the passengers’ flights and everyone was able to reach their destination.
Just a scare
After, Neil Firththe wing engineer of the Airbus A330 confirmed that a secondary structure used to improve the aerodynamics of the aircraft was affected.
Therefore “there was no impact on the structural integrity or load carrying capacity of the wing”. “The plane was safe to use,” she acknowledged.
video
For this reason the Virgin Atlantic flight from Manchester to New York was cancelled. In the end it was nothing, but they should have checked it with more time.
In any case, just in case, the plane was subjected to a maintenance check and the screws were changed.
Source: Clarin
Mary Ortiz is a seasoned journalist with a passion for world events. As a writer for News Rebeat, she brings a fresh perspective to the latest global happenings and provides in-depth coverage that offers a deeper understanding of the world around us.