Posted on 11/09/2023 6:38:41 AM PST by DFG
A plane previously used by Britain’s King Charles and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was forced to turn around after reaching an altitude of 14,500 feet when crew members realized two of its windows were missing.
The Airbus A321 took off from London Stansted Airport for Orlando on Oct. 4 with windows that were damaged by high-powered lights used during a film shoot the day before, The Independent reported.
The Titan Airways aircraft was carrying 11 crew members and nine passengers who were employees of airline and the US-based luxury tour company TCS World Travel, according to an incident report by the Air Accidents Investigations Branch.
A crew member noticed after takeoff that the seal around one of the windows was “flapping” and that the noise in the cabin was “loud enough to damage your hearing,” according to the agency.
The crew reportedly discovered that two window assemblies – the inner and outer panes and rubber seals – were missing, and that only the plastic scratch panes remained in place.
The pilots stopped the climb and reduced the airspeed as the plane halted its transcontinental journey and headed back to London. There were no “abnormal indications” in the cockpit and that cabin remained pressurized “normally,” the AAIB said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Thats embarrassing (to say the least) for the PIC.
And they reached 15,000 feet without noticing?
Import the 3rd world become the 3rd world.
One would think it would have been a bit breezy in there.
Huh? That must be one heck of a pressurization system. Maybe they meant the cockpit pressurized normally?
Those are some seriously “high powered lights.” I know those get hot. Perhaps too close to the plastic panes
The reason they noticed the windows were missing because you need oxygen at that level.
So. The film crew from the shoot the day before knocked out the windows and they propped the windows back in - without the seals.
Sounds to me like the old meme “Did you break it?” Yes. “Did anybody see you break it? No. “Hide it!”
Lower standards and you get lower performance.
So the “journalist” implied that the plane was unsafe when the King used it because a window was damaged yesterday by a film crew.
That’s the state of modern journalism.
Another thought, It was just a broken window seal. How would one know it was broken until the plane was taken to high altitude where the broken seal would be apparent?
I guarantee that the pilot heartrate remained the same. “OK, we’ve got a broken window, let’s land and fix it.”
I can’t fathom how there was any real danger.
Unpossible.
“I feel a draft. Do you feel a draft?”
Idiot film crew.
Most passenger aircraft are pressurized to the equivalent of something like 10,000 feet IIRC, so at 14K with the window scratch pane still in place, the loss probably wasn’t enough yet to trigger any alarms. Had they gone higher, the pilots would have received warnings and the masks would have dropped.
Aircraft quality control inspectors from Arab countries working out for you, Britain?
What ever happened to “Pre-Flight Inspections?”
“One would think it would have been a bit breezy in there.”
Read the OP.
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