British Airways’ flight from Cape Town to London was canceled this evening for an unusual reason.
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Doorless British Airways Boeing 777 in South Africa
A British Airways Boeing 777-200ER lost a door between flights at Cape Town Airport (CPT) today. The 21 year old plane, which has the registration code G-YMMH, flew from London to Cape Town on Tuesday evening, landing in Cape Town early Wednesday morning.
Unfortunately upon arrival things didn’t exactly go as planned, as the aircraft’s second door on the left was ripped off. Below are some images of the damage — as you can see, the door was simply placed in the jet bridge after it disconnected.
What went wrong? While I haven’t received official confirmation, it’s my understanding that this happened after arriving passengers deplaned, and before the plane was brought to a remote parking stand for the day. I think it’s safe to assume that this incident involves the operation of the jet bridge, since that’s what’s most likely to rip off the door. Whether there was a malfunction or it was user error remains to be seen.
The return flight to London was canceled
The plane was supposed to sit at Cape Town Airport all day, and then operate an overnight flight back to London Heathrow (LHR), departing at 9:15PM with the flight number BA42. As you’d expect, that flight was canceled, because I imagine fixing this will take more than a few hours. While there’s a lot in the airline industry that can be fixed with duct tape, this (hopefully) isn’t one of those things. 😉
While incidents like this are extremely rare, they’re not unheard of. In the past we’ve seen doors ripped off of Boeing 777s operated by American Airlines, Emirates Airline, and Singapore Airlines.
Bottom line
A British Airways Boeing 777 had one of its door ripped off in Cape Town today. This happened after passengers deplaned, and it’s rumored that this involved the jet bridge and was the fault of the ground crew (though we don’t know much beyond that). I’m curious to see when this plane is flying again.
What do you make of this British Airways 777 door incident?
Opppppps, I'll bet a few returning passengers were bummed out!!
Kinda like what happened to Dan Bongino when YouTube today PERMANENTLY banned one of Fox New's Biggest Dopes of a host for evading Covid misinformation suspension!! That will teach that Moron a lesson...... This guy had a Trump-sized Ego that only lead him into trouble. When will people learn?
where did politics come into tho buddy?
When the few returning passengers were bummed out!!
Many years ago, at KBWI, a KLM 747 had a door damaged when the jet bridge was not lowered before the fueling began. As the plane became heavier the door contacted he floor of the bridge and was sprung out of alignment. Ground engineers were able to close the door, but several passengers had to be removed from the flight because there was one means of exit missing. Costly error. on't know how long the a/c was out of service during repairs.
The likelihood of human error by the gate crew is sky high. I have had that happen with Delta twice in as many years, MCO-LGA (B737-900) and BGR-BOS (CRJ-900). In both cases, the gate agent had NO EARTHLY IDEA how to operate the bridge for that airframe. Too much time had passed since the agent received training on anything but the most common configuration parking at that gate. In both cases, it took 30 minutes...
The likelihood of human error by the gate crew is sky high. I have had that happen with Delta twice in as many years, MCO-LGA (B737-900) and BGR-BOS (CRJ-900). In both cases, the gate agent had NO EARTHLY IDEA how to operate the bridge for that airframe. Too much time had passed since the agent received training on anything but the most common configuration parking at that gate. In both cases, it took 30 minutes to open the door and enable us to disembark. In the first case, I had reached the end of my journey and left in a huff but without further issues. In the second, I nearly missed my connection, sprinting between gates. Even if BA had good repair resources in SA, this latest incident would delay the bird's return to service by WEEKS because its airworthiness has to be evaluated by regulators after the repairs are complete.
This surely cost someone their job. And that's fine because we don't need the all Three Stooges as ground handlers.
sometimes the tug crew push back with the jetty in situ.
shouldve checked the doors though.
Are there any facilities that can repair such damage in Cape Town? Only SAA has heavy maintenance in CPT, and they don’t operate 777’s.
???
"The return flight to London was canceled." Huh, I can't imagine why.
Wonder if BA called for the nearest handyman to come fix the door.
Just here to say it’s not duct tape, it’s “speed tape”.
BA don’t have much luck in SA, in 2013 a B744 wing crashed into an office block and was subsequently scrapped.
I'm sure BA's ground handler in S. Africa will be getting an invoice for the damage that was done -either because of equipment malfunction or human error.
The Boeing 767 was one of the few aircraft where the door slides up and into the aircraft so you can't rip the door off because of jetway malfunction.
The DC-10 / MD-11 and L-1011 also had cabin doors that slid upward.
“Bottom line…”
Is it for people to scroll down to if they’re too lazy to read the piece ?
Irritating & unnecessary.
it's a conclusion, if you don't love it, don't read it
It's a word count thing. It's for the AI who is too dumb to understand the piece.
Irritating & unnecessary, and brings a lot of visitors from Google and more ad revenue.
Bottom line...
It tricks Google at your expense.
"Keep it coming, keep it coming, yeah a bit more, little more, more, bit more...crunch. Yeah that's good."