Passengers on a British Airways flight from London Heathrow to Kuala Lumpur got a very different form of in-flight entertainment than they were expecting when a ground vehicle belonging to a supplier of BA’s seatback screens got wedged underneath their plane on Monday night.
Preparations for the marathon 13-hour flight to Malaysia went horribly wrong when a small van belonging to global aviation tech firm Thales slid right under the fuselage of the seven-year-old Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner.
How exactly this came to happen is still being investigated, although it’s believed the driver may have left the handbrake off as they went to service the plane. The vehicle then started to roll forward and only came to rest after it was properly wedged under the belly of the plane.
In a photo shared by an anonymous contributor to an aviation Facebook page, ground workers, along with an airport fire officer, can be seen inspecting the damage to the aircraft.
Given that the aircraft could have sustained structural damage in the accident, British Airways had little choice but to pull the aircraft from service and reschedule the flight.
According to the flight tracking website Flight Radar 24, British Airways is hoping to get the flight away at 3 pm on Tuesday, nearly 24 hours later than originally planned.
BA’s Dreamliner woes have been well-documented, and the airline has struggled to maintain its planned schedule due to continuing issues with the Boeing 787s in its fleet.
Last December, British Airways said it was being forced to scrap its daily service to Abu Dhabi for the Summer 2025 season because of reliability problems with the Rolls-Royce Trent engines that power its 787 fleet.
The issues had also led to the suspension of flights to Kuwait and Bahrain, while British Airways also pulled out of Dallas Fort Worth, handing over capacity to joint venture partner American Airlines.
How a vehicle can get stuck under a plane is a perfectly logical question, but it’s not something that is unheard of.
Last April, Emirates was forced to ground one of its Airbus A380 superjumbos after a service truck got wedged under the double-deck plane during a turnaround at Moscow Domodedovo Airport.
Due to Western sanctions on aircraft spare parts to Russia, it was feared that the plane might be stuck in Moscow for some considerable time. Thankfully, the damage wasn’t too severe, and Emirates was able to fly the aircraft back to Dubai without passengers on board where more extensive repairs could take place.
