Flight canceled after passenger spotted missing part on wing
- The Virgin Atlantic Airbus A330 was flying from Manchester to New York
- The crew tried to reassure the passenger there was no safety concern
- The flight was canceled for precautionary engineering checks
Virgin Atlantic Cosmic Girl, a repurposed Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747 aircraft carrying a rocket, is parked at Spaceport Cornwall, at Cornwall Airport in Newquay, England, Monday, Jan. 9, 2023. Engineers are making final preparations for the first satellite launch from the U.K. later Monday, when a repurposed passenger plane is expected to release a Virgin Orbit rocket carrying several small satellites into space. (Ben Birchall/PA via AP)
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(NewsNation) — A Virgin Atlantic flight headed to New York was canceled after a passenger spotted parts missing from the aircraft’s wing.
The passenger alerted a crew member to the issue moments before the Airbus A330 aircraft took off from Manchester, England, on Jan. 15, according to the Manchester Evening News.
The crew tried to reassure the passenger that there were no safety concerns, but they said they were especially nervous after the Alaska Airlines midflight door plug blowout. The incident prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to ground Boeing 737 Max 9 airplanes.
Airbus UK chief wing engineer Neil Firth said the missing fasteners had “no impact to the structural integrity or load capability of the wing, and the aircraft was safe to operate.”
Still, the Virgin Atlantic flight “was canceled to provide time for precautionary additional engineering maintenance checks, which allowed our team the maximum time to complete their inspections,” a Virgin Atlantic spokesperson told USA Today.
“The safety of our customers and crew is always our top priority, and this was not compromised at any point,” the airline continued. “We always work well above industry safety standards, and the aircraft is now back in service. We’d like to apologize to our customers for the delay to their journeys.”
The safety of air travel has come into the spotlight after the Alaska Airlines incident and a string of close calls on airport runways last year.