- An Austrian Airlines Airbus A320 was flying from Mallorca to Vienna
- Passengers only realized the extent of the damage after the exit
A passenger jet made a miraculous landing on Sunday despite hail destroying the front of the plane and shattering the cockpit windshield.
An Austrian Airlines Airbus A320 was flying from Mallorca to Vienna when chunks of ice hit the plane and its front windows.
The plane’s pilot was forced to make a blind landing, with the passengers realizing the true extent of the damage – and their narrow escape – only after the plane landed.
After taking off from Palma, Majorca, at around 3.30pm on Sunday, the initial stages of the flight were uneventful and experienced minor turbulence, passengers said.
However, the airline said the plane flew through a “storm cell” as it approached Vienna and about half an hour before it was due to land.
Passengers described “violent shaking” and the pilot alerted them to a broken windshield.
Nevertheless, the plane managed to land in Vienna. The landing was “a bit bumpier than normal”, one passenger told Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung.
It wasn’t until the passengers got out and walked around the front of the plane that they realized the full extent of the damage.
Images of the plane show the windshield is broken and the nose of the plane is almost completely missing. What is still intact has round marks and dents.
“At that moment the passengers realized that the pilot had made a blind landing and how close they had come to disaster,” one told Kronen.
“It could have turned out differently,” said the passenger, who was flying back from Mallorca with the group after celebrating a friend’s 30th birthday.
Austrian Airlines confirmed the incident to the newspaper on Sunday evening.
“On today’s flight OS434 from Palma de Mallorca to Vienna, an Airbus A320 aircraft was damaged by hail,” the Kronen airline said.
She explained that the plane encountered a “thunderstorm cell” as it approached Vienna and said the cockpit crew did not see the cell on the weather radar.
“According to current information, two windows of the front cockpit of the aircraft, the nose of the aircraft (radome) and some panels were damaged by hail,” Kronen said, referring to the airline’s statement.
Austrian Airlines said a Mayday call was made and that rescue teams rushed to the airport before the plane landed.
Miraculously, the pilot managed to crash the plane despite the damage to the windshield, and everyone on board escaped any injury.
“The plane was able to land safely at Vienna-Schwechat Airport. All passengers on the flight were unharmed,” the airline told the newspaper.
“The Austrian Airlines technical team has already been tasked with a specific assessment of the damage to the aircraft in question. The safety of our passengers and our crews is the highest priority of Austrian Airlines.”
The near miss is the latest mid-air incident to make headlines in recent weeks.
Last month, a Singapore Airlines jet hit severe turbulence, killing one man – 73-year-old Briton Geoffrey Kitchen – and seriously injuring others.
Flight SQ321 went through huge swings in gravity in less than five seconds, likely causing injuries to people who were not strapped into their seats, according to a report by Singapore’s Ministry of Transport released last month.
The plane dropped 178 feet in less than one second, which “probably resulted in the passengers not being strapped in to get airborne” before falling back down, the Department of Transportation said.
A Boeing 777 flying from London to Singapore on May 21 ran into turbulence that threw people and objects around the cabin. The plane with 211 passengers and 18 crew members made an emergency landing in Bangkok.
As the aircraft cruised at an altitude of about 37,000 feet above southern Myanmar, it began to experience slight vibrations due to changes in the force of gravity.
The jet’s altitude increased — likely caused by updrafts rather than any pilot action — causing the autopilot system to push the plane back to the selected altitude, the report said.
The pilots also noticed an uncommanded increase in speed, which they tried to check by extending panels called speed brakes, and “the pilot called out that the seat belt was on.”
Seconds later, the plane went into a violent dive, causing the unstrapped passengers to climb out of their seats and fall backwards. “This sequence of events likely caused injuries to the crew and passengers,” the report said.
The pilots disengaged the autopilot to stabilize the aircraft and flew it manually for 21 seconds before returning to autopilot.
The plane made a normal, controlled descent and did not experience further turbulence until it landed in Bangkok nearly an hour later, the ministry said, adding that investigations were ongoing.
Passengers described the “absolute horror” of the shaking plane, loose items flying and injured people lying paralyzed on the floor of the plane.