V-Flyer

Has G-VWKD returned to London after the bird strike on 15 July in Hong Kong?

It was still in Hong Kong last Monday night

yup its still there today the 20th and will be there for some time. allegedly there is an 18 foot gash at the back of the aircraft. Airbus technicians on tuesday to survey the damage but it looks like it will be there for a while. By the way it was a TAIL strike and not a bird strike

What is a tail strike?

Tail strike is an over rotation of the aircraft on take-off, so the back end (tail) of the plane is scrapped along the runway before the plane climbs out. It's not as bad as an 18 foot gash, but needs inspection and repair.

Originally posted by ctang
What is a tail strike?

This is when on take-off the underside of the tail section of the plane makes contact with the runway. Usually caused by gusts of wind pushing the angle of climb up. It happens more than you might think and often there is no effect whatsoever apart from a scary looking flash of sparks, however on this occasion damage was sustained. Note however that no passengers where harmed, simply a long delay as the plane dumped fuel and returned to land.

I'm assuming that being one plane short might cause a few operational difficulties in the short-term.

Will they be delaying the PE/Y upgrade schedule as a result?

Phil

According to A.net, G-VFIZ was delivered today, so unless it needs to get its cabin fitted then it should work nicely.

Originally posted by FamilyMan
I'm assuming that being one plane short might cause a few operational difficulties in the short-term.

Will they be delaying the PE/Y upgrade schedule as a result?

Phil

Well VS200 and 201 were cancelled on either Saturday or Sunday (can't remember which) When we were in the Clubhouse in HKG on Monday there were 3 VS aircraft there - G-VWKD, G-VGAS (our aircraft to SYD) and G-VMEG which was flight VS1201 to LHR. It was boarded at 18:45 to take stranded passengers back to LHR

I wondered why there was an extra aircraft parked on a remote stand today as i went through on the 201 to london. The 200 was running approx 2 hours late too as it was only just pushing back when we arrived in to hongkong.
I did notice though that the runway at hong kong was quite bumpy especially around the rotation point, and seeing how long these 340'6 are im not surprised they have a few tail scrapes!

Anyone got any photos of this?

Originally posted by flying low
Anyone got any photos of this?

Try the a-net thread here - towards the bottom (no pun intended).

Phil

P.S. Mods - Responding to question here (as this was where asked) but realise we now seem to have two parallel threads running - maybe lock one down?