Minutes before take-off, on a New York-bound Virgin Atlantic flight, a passenger spotted missing screws on the plane’s wing. This prompted the cancellation of Flight VS127. British traveller Phil Hardy, 41, observed four absent fasteners on the wing during a safety briefing at Manchester Airport in the United Kingdom on January 15, as reported by The New York Post.
The moment Phil Hardy noticed the missing screws, he alerted the cabin crew. After notifying the flight attendant, the issue was brought to the pilot’s attention, and engineers were promptly called out to examine the Virgin Atlantic aircraft before its scheduled take-off to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City.
Upon being asked about the incident, the British man told the Kennedy News agency, “I’m a good flyer, but my partner was not loving the information I was telling her and starting to panic, and I was trying to put her mind at rest as much as I could. I thought it was best to mention it to a flight attendant to be on the safe side.”
Hardy said that the airline staff and the engineer repeatedly reassured him that there was nothing wrong with the wing. However, he remained anxious and his fear was heightened recalling the recent ordeal in which an Alaska Airlines plane lost its door plug and a chunk of its fuselage flew off mid-flight.
He further told the media outlet that at one point, the engineers removed one of the screws from a different hole and tried to fix it in one of the missing holes, but it wouldn’t go in.
A spokesperson with Virgin Atlantic told Fox Business that the flight was ultimately cancelled to provide time for precautionary additional engineering maintenance checks, which allowed our team the maximum time to complete their inspections.
“The safety of our customers and crew is always our top priority and this was not compromised at any point. We always work well above industry safety standards and the aircraft is now back in service. Passengers were rebooked onto alternative flights to the Big Apple,” the Virgin representative said in the statement.
“We would like to apologize to our customers for the delay to their journeys,” the representatives concluded.
Hardy and his partner were able to fly out the next morning, but the delay cost them two days of their holiday. Hardy claims that the entire ordeal has left them with a ‘sour taste in his mouth.’
“The four missing fasteners did not impact the load capability of the wing, the structural integrity of the wing, or the aircraft’s ability to operate safely,” said an Airbus Local Chief Wing Engineer for A330 to The Mirror.
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