A British Airways A380 suffered a birdstrike while landing in Madrid.
The British Airways A380 (reg. G-XLEF) has been damaged while approach to Madrid.
The aircraft was performing flight #BA462 from London to Madrid when it suffered a birdstrike.
The bird hit the cowling and went through the engine number 2.
The passengers have been told “The inbound flight to LHR just cancelled due to major damage”. They will reschedule for tomorrow.
The affected aircraft (registration: G-XLEF) is reportedly still on the ground at Madrid Airport at the time of publication. Return flight BA463, which was due to fly back to London Heathrow less than two hours later, was canceled. BA is set to fly in a replacement aircraft to operate the return flight the next day.
BA’s A380 return after the pandemic..
It has been around three weeks since British Airways returned its Airbus A380s to action. Presently, the jumbo A380 has been deployed on short-haul European routes (Frankfurt and Madrid) for crew familiarization purposes. This is set to last one month to prepare the crew for international operations.
The airline plans to put four of its 12 Airbus A380s back into service in December. As for its other eight A380s, British Airways still intends to keep them in the fleet. As Simple Flying reported in August, BA extended its maintenance contract for all 12 A380s for at least five years from August 2022.