A330 passenger missing wing screw notification, flight cancelled

The dire situation may have saved the lives of hundreds of passengers. In mid-January, a passenger on a Virgin Atlantic Airbus A330, en route from Manchester to New York, noticed that several screws were missing from one of the plane’s wings. “I’m a good driver, but my partner didn’t like the information I was telling him and started panicking. I tried to reassure him as much as possible.”, he told the Kennedy News Agency. If a technician quickly intervened to plug the fixings, the flight in question was canceled as a precaution. “Allow time for additional technical maintenance checks”A representative of the company suggested New York Post .

Passengers are not at risk

Virgin Atlantic however is clear: the absence of screws on this part of the machine does not endanger tourists. The relative structure was only secondary and made it possible to improve the aerodynamics of the plane. “Therefore there was no impact on wing integrity or load capacity, and the aircraft was able to operate safely”Neil Firth, Airbus’ local chief engineer for the A330 explained. All the passengers were then taken to another flight to reach their destination. A rarity for Airbus, this type of incident is more common at Boeing – a company where technical problems have escalated in recent weeks.