Occasional aircraft vibrations should not unusual during flight as they’ll typically be attributed to varied causes, comparable to landing gear extensions and retraction, disturbance in air flow, and extension of speed brakes. But for one Virgin Atlantic flight, the vibrations would occur on the aircraft engines, forcing it to declare an emergency and divert back to its origin.
Initially certain for Washington DC
On June sixteenth, Virgin Atlantic had a routinely scheduled flight service that will ferry passengers from London Heathrow Airport to Washington Dulles International Airport with flight VS 21. One in all the airline’s Airbus A330-300s, a 12-year-old registered as G-VKSS, was deployed for this particular flight.
The widebody previously operated several transatlantic flights from London Heathrow Airport and Manchester Airport without incident before June sixteenth, including destinations comparable to Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, Recent York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, and Boston Logan International Airport, to call a couple of.
But operating taking off from London Heathrow Airport’s runway 09R at roughly 19:19 as VS 21, the aircraft would soon experience startling problems when excessive vibrations were felt from an engine nearly an hour into the everyday seven-hour flight journey. The flight crew declared an emergency as a result of their engine issue and requested to return to London.
Turning around at Galway
At roughly 20:12, the troubled Airbus widebody was just above Galway, Ireland, and flying at about 38,000 feet when it turned around and descended to about 35,000 feet. During its return journey before descending to London Heathrow Airport, the aircraft maintained a lower altitude of 29,000 feet.
The aircraft entered back to the UK coastline at 20:44, and the descent to London began at roughly 20:53 when the Airbus A330-300 descended to about 20,000 feet to the north of Bristol. At 21:08, the aircraft was almost ready for the ultimate approach for runway 09L and safely landed at roughly 21:17, vacating the runway just a few minutes later.
Assumingly canceled for the day
While it’s clear the G-VKSS is out of commission in the interim until the engine issues are fixed, what stays unclear is what is going to occur to the passengers onboard who were presupposed to be in Washington DC. At the moment of writing, Virgin Atlantic is yet to reply to our request for a comment.
Flight schedules via FlightRadar24.com also show that there wasn’t a substitute flight given with a special aircraft, and the following available flights were for the next days and with the estimated departure timings as per regular schedules. This might mean that flight VS 21 was assumingly canceled for the day as a result of the emergency diversion.
Photo: Fasttailwind | Shutterstock
Presumably and hopefully, the affected passengers got alternate flight options that will eventually get them to Washington DC or some compensation. And just as hopefully, may the engine repairs on G-VKSS finish properly and quickly in order that the widebody may be back flying within the skies.