A British Airways Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner has been grounded after it was ‘impaled’ by some engineering steps that had been positioned underneath the massive widebody aircraft while it was being refueled ahead of a flight from the airline’s home hub at London Heathrow Airport.
Passengers who had been due to fly on the aircraft from Heathrow to Chicago O’Hare on Sunday afternoon watched on as a group of engineers, along with a whole host of other airport spectators, examined the situation and figured out how to remove the steps.
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It turns out that the aircraft, estimated to cost around $355 million, needed to have some oxygen cylinders replaced ahead of its flight to Chicago, and engineers had accessed a hatch underneath the fuselage where the cylinders are located.
Some steps were positioned underneath the fuselage, but unbeknownst to the unlucky engineer who put the steps in place, the aircraft hadn’t been refuelled at the point that the work started to take place.
A short time later, however, the refuelling truck arrived and started to load up the plane with up to 126,000 liters of fuel for the transatlantic crossing.
The Boeing 787 sits higher when it is unloaded, so when fuel and cargo were loaded on the airplane, the height of the plane dropped, essentially impaling the fuselage on the engineering steps.
“The yellow steps are STUCK inside a hatch on this Boeing 787,” wrote a passenger who had been hoping to fly on British Airways flight BA-299 to Chicago O’Hare on May 3 in a post on Reddit.
“There has been probably 15-20 people come and look at it. Take photos. Stare… shrug and walk away,” the post continued. “The passengers have all been bused to this plane on a remote stand, and people are losing their minds with the lack of communication.”
“Even the police have come to take photos (and probably laugh).” The passenger summed up the situation in just one word: “Shambles!”
Passengers looked on at the mess unfolding in front of them through the windows of crowded buses that had driven them to the side of the aircraft before the airline realized that this wasn’t going to be an easy fix.
After standing around on hot and stuffy buses for an hour and a half, British Airways eventually drove the passengers back to the aircraft terminal, where they were given a frustrating but not entirely surprising update: The plane wasn’t going to be going anywhere.
In fact, two days later, the one-year-old aircraft (registration: G-ZBLJ) remains grounded at Heathrow.
In June 2021, a British Airways Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner was badly damaged at Heathrow Airport when the nose wheel collapsed during a turnaround on a particularly wet day in London.
The embarrassing incident happened after engineers were carrying out maintenance on the nose gear, and a nose pin that locks the front wheels in place was accidentally removed by an engineer who was unfamiliar with the setup.
At the time, the aircraft was being used as a ‘freighter’ aircraft, transporting medical supplies from China to the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The aircraft was grounded for some time but is now back in service.
