An Austrian Airlines flight managed to successfully complete its journey to Vienna despite the plane suffering extensive damage in an unforeseen severe hailstorm.
Flight OS 434 took off from Palma de Mallorca at around 4 pm yesterday and had a smooth journey until almost reaching its destination in Vienna. Not long before reaching the Austrian capital however, while flying over Hartberg, at an altitude of 6,000 metres, the plane, an Airbus A320, encountered a severe hailstorm that had not been detected by the weather radar.
The hail almost fully torn off the aircraft’s nose, leaving holes in the panels that remained attached. The first two layers of the windshield were also heavily damaged, but remained in their place, not causing any loss of pressure. Panels covering the engines were also affected.
Despite the extensive damage and the broken windshield leaving the pilots with almost no visibility outside, the plane’s engines and controls remained intact, so the pilots were able to safely land the aircraft around 6 pm at Vienna Airport, where air traffic controllers gave them priority over all other flights after learning about the issues.
Noone aboard suffered any injuries and passengers were able to deboard the plane normally, through the stairs. They were then taken to the terminal on a bus. “The aircraft was able to land safely at Vienna-Schwechat Airport. All passengers on the flight were uninjured. The safety of our passengers and our crews is Austrian Airlines’ top priority”, airline spokesperson Anita Kiefer told Austrian Wings magazine.
“I think we were about 20 minutes from landing when we got into a cloud of hail and thunderstorm, and the turbulence started. We could definitely feel the hail coming down on the plane and it was quite loud and ofc super rocky for a minute”, Emmeley Oakley, a passenger on the flight, told ABC News via text message. “It wasn’t until we exited that we saw the nose was missing! The pilots really did an excellent job keeping things as smooth and safe as they could.”
“The Austrian Airlines technical team has already been entrusted with the specific damage assessment of the aircraft in question”, Kiefer said, estimating the damage to hundreds of thousands of euros. The Airbus has already been in service for 23 years, so the airline and manufacturer will have to decide whether or not the aircraft is still worth repairing at this point or if it’s time for it to retire.
