Yesterday, a British Airways flight from Stuttgart bound for London Heathrow suffered a lightning strike, forcing a diversion to Gatwick.
Information is limited surrounding this incident, but below is what we know on this so far.
Without further ado, let’s get into it…
Lightning Strike!: British Airways Flight BA919 – Stuttgart to London…
British Airways flight BA919, which suffered the lightning strike, is a routine scheduled flight between Stuttgart and London Heathrow.
Also, the aircraft involved in the incident was G-EUYM.
As per data from Planespotters.net, G-EUYM is a 13.0 year old Airbus A320ceo that was delivered to the airline in August 2011.
Of the A320ceo variant, British Airways has 65 of them in their fleet.
Furthermore, within that 65, all of them are in active service, with an average fleet age of 17.8 years.
As well as the A320ceo variant, the mainline BA fleet has the following aircraft:
- 29 Airbus A319s.
- 24 Airbus A320neos.
- 25 Airbus A321 Family aircraft.
- 18 Airbus A350-1000s.
- 12 Airbus A380s.
- 59 Boeing 777s.
- 38 Boeing 787s
- Four Dornier 328s.
- 20 Embraer E190s.
British Airways flight BA919 departed Stuttgart at 1337 local time yesterday and tracked towards London Heathrow.
As per AirLive, it is understood that the lightning strike happened during it’s approach into Heathrow.
From there, a go-around was initiated by the crew, with a decision made to divert to Gatwick instead.
British Airways flight BA919, which suffered the lightning strike, landed safely into London Gatwick at 1427 local time without further incident.
Grounded for Several Hours…
Following that incident involving British Airways flight BA919 between Stuttgart and London Heathrow, G-EUYM was grounded for around six hours.
Data from RadarBox highlights that in the evening of July 7, the aircraft repositioned back to Heathrow from Gatwick.
From there, the aircraft night-stopped at Heathrow, presumably to be checked further by maintenance crews there.
At around 08:39 local time this morning, the aircraft re-entered commercial service, operating the BA918 rotation to Stuttgart.
At the time of publication, the aircraft is currently performing the return sector back to Heathrow.
Over the course of today and tomorrow, G-EUYM is expected to operate the following flights:
- BA368 – Heathrow to Marseille.
- BA369 – Marseille to Heathrow.
- BA866 – Heathrow to Budapest.
- BA867 – Budapest to Heathrow.
- BA892 – Heathrow to Sofia.
- BA893 – Sofia to Heathrow.
From there, it is clear that any damage sustained to the aircraft following the lightning strike has been fixed quickly.
Furthermore, no additional incidents have been reported with the aircraft following yesterday’s events.
In a statement, British Airways said the following:
“BA919 diverted to Gatwick earlier this afternoon due to weather related conditions in the region.”
“The flight landed just before 2pm. Customers were driven from Gatwick to Heathrow.”
As soon as we acquire more information pertinent to this incident, then we will update you accordingly.
Such updates will be seen at the bottom of the article if and when they come in.
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