It was a tense time for 173 passengers and 4 flight attendants when an Austrian Airways airplane flew by a hailstorm on June 9. AUA flight OS434 was on its return flight from Palma de Mallorca to Vienna when the airplane received into an emergency scenario.
“We went down abruptly, we had been actually hit for a number of seconds and there was a loud bang, following which I noticed by the window how items of plastic flew previous,” Manuel Hofer from Sonnberg im Mühlkreis described the incident to the OÖNachrichten. The Airbus was badly broken: the cockpit home windows had been shattered. The wings and nostril fairing had been additionally badly broken by hail.
Accusations towards the pilots
Within the days following the accident, there have been growing experiences of mishaps that precipitated the airplane to get caught within the storm. Based on a report within the “Kurier”, the co-pilot forgot to accurately align the antenna of the climate radar in the course of the touchdown strategy. The airplane flew blindly into the storm within the Hartberg space. The thunderstorm cell was “not seen to the cockpit crew on the climate radar, in line with their assertion,” the AUA press workplace stated in response to a question. It additionally stated: “The climate radar on board is primarily used to fly round or over thunderstorms.”
One other accusation: the captain of the airplane was not within the cockpit when the Airbus flew by the storm. He’s stated to have gone to the bathroom. Truly, each the pilot and co-pilot must be of their seats in the course of the touchdown strategy. AUA has been tight-lipped on the matter, saying it doesn’t wish to touch upon ongoing investigations.
Each the Austrian Airways and the Federal Security Investigation Board (SUB) have launched an investigation into the incident. The Austrian Airways pressured that each the captain of the plane and his co-pilot had been “very skilled of their roles when it comes to whole flight hours and flight hours on the A320 plane”. The crew is now once more on obligation. They had been routinely launched from obligation for seven days following the incident.
Along with the investigations already underway, the general public prosecutor’s workplace will now even be wanting into the hailstorm. The Viennese lawyer Wolfgang Listing has despatched a press release of information to the investigative authorities in Korneuburg. In his criticism, Listing accuses unknown perpetrators of “negligent endangerment of the general public”. The airplane was flown into the storm, though the climate forecasts from Austro-Management had particularly warned of a thunderstorm cell within the Hartberg space. When the airplane entered the thunderstorm cell, the passengers had been “presumably positioned in an acute life-threatening scenario”, in line with the assertion of information. Nonetheless, flying across the hazard zone would have been “simply attainable”.
Writer
Philipp Hirsch
Deputy Head of Regional Division
Philipp Hirsch
