British Airways flight windscreen cracks at 35,000 feet by block of ice
The flight made an emergency landing at San Jose airport post the incident, passengers and crew safely deboarded the aircraft.
FollowBritish Airways aircraft to London with 200 passengers on board survived a mid-air accident. A block of ice from a jet flying about 1,000 feet crashed onto the windscreen of the plane flying at 35,000 feet and leaving it cracked, media reported.
Flight BA2236 was flying with the holiday tourists from London's Gatwick international airport to San Jose in Costa Rica on Christmas Day when the incident happened.
The block of ice broke the two-inch-thick windscreen, which is close to bulletproof to fight the extreme force. However, the aircraft landed safely in San Jose.
The event was described as 'one-in-a-million' that landed safely with all the travelers but the passengers stranded over Christmas as they could not make it back to London on the same flight.
Jo Mitchell and Geir Olafsson, two passengers from the plane, were on honeymoon in Costa Rica. They board the flight from their Pacific coast resort to return to Edinburgh via Gatwick to meet family for Christmas.
Mitchell while talking to British newspaper The Independent said, "My husband is part-Icelandic and his family who lives in Edinburgh celebrate Christmas on 24 December. We were desperately trying to find a connecting flight at this point that would get us there in time to not miss his family Christmas."
According to them, the BA app was showing a vague status about the flight being delayed to the next day. Mitchell further added, "The flight time, however, only showed a four-hour delay. We had received no information via email or message so we hoped it was just a glitch. We dropped our car and continued to the airport, desperately hoping it wasn’t true."
The flight was rescheduled 50 hours post the original departure time. "At this point, we were devastated realizing we would miss Christmas with both of our families," Mitchell said.
British Airways later issued an apology to the passengers who had to call off their Christmas Day plans due to the incident. The Independent quoted the British Airways officials stating, "We will never fly an aircraft unless we feel it is completely safe to do so, and on this occasion, our engineers were unable to clear it to fly. Since then, our teams have been working behind the scenes to do all they can to ensure an aircraft is ready at the earliest opportunity to bring customers to London."
The official was quoted as saying, "We appreciate the patience and the understanding of our customers and our engineers and crew colleagues who have also done all they can to assist."
The report also added that British Airways offered a full refund to all the affected passengers and an additional 520 pounds per person stipulated for long delays under air passengers rights rules.
