This looks pretty bad. Yesterday a Qatar Airways A321 was undergoing maintenance at a remote stand at Doha’s Hamad International Airport, and apparently the inflight entertainment satellite antenna caught fire. This was on the A321 with the tail number A7-AIB, which took its first flight in July 2010, so it’s still a fairly new plane. Here’s the statement from the airline regarding this:
At 06:50am today a Qatar Airways Airbus A321 aircraft positioned at a remote stand experienced a fire whilst under maintenance at Hamad International Airport (HIA). The fire inside the cabin was promptly contained and extinguished. Whilst there was some damage to the aircraft there were no injuries. A full investigation is being conducted by the local authorities to establish the cause. Traffic at HIA was not affected and is running as normal.
Pictures of the burnt plane have been circulating on Facebook, and it’s not pretty (and certainly looks worse than “some damage”):
I’m curious whether Qatar Airways plans to write off the plane, or if there’s anyway a plane with this much damage can still be fixed.
At least this happened while the plane was undergoing maintenance, rather than while the plane was in service…
(Featured Image: Konstantin von Wedelstaedt)
Membership is free and takes no more information than commenting as a guest. Earn status points for good contributions, and see fewer ads as your status grows.