Argentina has been dealing with a terrible storm in recent days, which turned deadly in the port city of Bahía Blanca, and has hit the capital city of Buenos Aires in the past day. This caused quite the impact on airport operations, with one particularly noteworthy incident.
Aerolineas Argentinas 737 gets loose in storm
Video footage has emerged of an Aerolineas Argentinas Boeing 737 being blown around in the wind while parked at Buenos Aires’ Jorge Newbery Airport (AEP). This incident involves a roughly 17-year-old Boeing 737-700 with the registration code LV-CAD.
In the video circulating widely online, you can see the parked jet start to move due to wind gusts. The plane starts to turn sharply to the right, with the left wing hitting ground equipment (including air stairs), before eventually coming to a stop again in a completely different direction.
I’m curious how bad the damage is to this aircraft, and how many other aircraft were damaged. The airport saw winds of up to 130 kilometers per hour (~80 miles per hour), so those are pretty strong winds.
Was the plane properly secured?
This is beyond my area of expertise, but I’m curious, as I’m sure some OMAAT readers have insights. Typically airlines make an effort to fly planes out of airports prior to major storms, to avoid damage as much as possible. I’m not sure if the airline just wasn’t anticipating such a bad storm, or if that would have simply been too big of an undertaking, given that Buenos Aires is the carrier’s only home base.
I am curious if best practices were otherwise used here. For example, with gusts so strong, you’d think that you’d want to move the ground equipment away from aircraft, so that they don’t potentially collide (as we’ve seen here)? Similarly, it looks to me like wheel chocks were being used to secure the location of the plane, though I can’t tell with certainty?
Ultimately planes moving in extreme wind conditions is nothing new, and it’s something we’ve seen many times before. However, sometimes the planes just have their nose lift off, before again being in place. It’s rare to see a plane move at an angle like this while parked.
Bottom line
An Aerolineas Argentinas Boeing 737 suffered damage during a storm that ripped through Buenos Aires overnight. The plane was parked at a remote stand at Jorge Newbery Airport, and ended up getting loose, turning significantly to the right, and then hitting ground equipment.
What do you make of this incident? Anyone know if this was unavoidable, or if the plane just somehow wasn’t secured correctly?
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