Last week, a Virgin Atlantic flight bound for New York was canceled just before takeoff after a passenger raised an alarm about missing screws from the plane’s wing.
On January 15, British traveler Phil Hardy, 41, noticed four missing fasteners on Flight VS127 at Manchester Airport during a safety briefing and promptly informed the cabin crew.
“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,” Hardy told the Kennedy News agency.
“I thought it was best to mention it to a flight attendant to be on the safe side.”
Following the alert, engineers were swiftly dispatched to conduct maintenance checks on the Airbus A330 aircraft scheduled for takeoff at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City.
Video shared by Hardy showed an engineer climbing onto the plane’s wing and using a screwdriver to work on some of the fasteners.
Despite reassurances from airline staff, Hardy remained concerned about the wing’s safety, citing a recent incident with an Alaska Airlines plane.
Virgin and Airbus asserted that last week’s aircraft had no safety impact despite the missing fixings.
According to the Virgin representative, the flight was canceled 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,” the rep said in the statement. “We always work well above industry safety standards and the aircraft is now back in service.”
According to Neil Firth, the Airbus local chief wing engineer for A330, the affected panel was a secondary structure designed to enhance the aerodynamics of the plane.
“Each of these panels has 119 fasteners, so there was no impact to the structural integrity or load capability of the wing, and the aircraft was safe to operate,” he said.
“As a precautionary measure, the aircraft underwent an additional maintenance check, and the fasteners were replaced.”
Travelers were rescheduled onto alternative flights bound for New York City.
“We’d like to apologize to our customers for the delay to their journeys,” the Virgin representative said.
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